October 11, 2026

Vertigo

105 Millimetres, Ground Rules at Tom Ford

In March, Place Vendôme was given over to a single white room and no runway. The models drifted through it, watching one another. Against all that white the clothes looked darker still: pinstripes, white shirts, glossy leather.

It was Haider Ackermann’s third collection for Tom Ford. He had come in September 2024 to take over a name that still belongs, in most minds, to one man. He arrived Bogotá-born and raised between Africa and Europe, with a much-praised stint at Berluti behind him. Tom Ford himself, the day the appointment was announced, praised the colour and the tailoring and added that, “above all he is modern.” 

Clean cuts can pass for simplicity, and people have mistaken Ackermann’s for exactly that. Look longer. The colour runs deep, the drape moves with a slow, sinuous certainty, and behind both stands a dramatist at home in spectacle and sensuality, who directs his models like actors.

Afterwards he told WWD he saw a violent world in which everyone is shouting, with “a lack of humility” in it, and that he wanted to get back to basics. The basics, in his hands, were the house’s signature tailoring. 

He is known as one of the nicest people in fashion, an odd credential for a man who dresses desire for a living. Wear one of his pieces and the two begin to make sense. It is hard not to feel looked after in them, and you carry yourself differently for the rest of the night.

Sleek, slender, sharp and, yes, sexy. Nobody slouches at 105 millimetres, and Tom Ford’s is five pairs of exactly that. The Selen is a pointed pump in calfskin embossed to echo karung snakeskin, its 6-millimetre strap crossing the foot and closing on a buckle engraved with the logo.

Round-toed and lighter in mood, the Cassia has satin around the ankle and, on the thong, a domed metal ornament holding forty-seven crystals, each set by hand. 

The Arc goes back to a point, squared this time, with the Double T in pale gold and Swarovski crystals set on tone-on-tone suede, trimmed in satin. 

Then the Vertigo, twice. As a d’Orsay pump it is machine-embroidered in sequins, its heel so thin it seems to hover. As a thigh-high boot it is calfskin stamped to look like a crocodile, zipped up the back, running the full length of the leg.

images COURTESY

author PRIYAM MISHRA