Quotes by Tom Ford

Glamour is something more than what you put on your body. It has to do with the way you carry yourself and the impact you have on others.

Style is very different from fashion. Once you find something that works, keep it.

You never make it, especially in this industry where you constantly churn out stuff, things. You never finish.

I love black dresses. I think everyone should own a lot, but black dresses don't sell online because on the computer they don't read like anything.

What is important is that we stop and realize, 'Okay. This is fine. I can enjoy that.' But what is really important, what I'm really going to take away with me from this life, is my connection with other people.

I was not popular. I was the kid in school that was bullied.

I live, I shop almost exclusively on the Internet. I've bought cars on the Internet. I watch television, I do everything on it. I even watch my son online.

I think you should suffer sometimes to be attractive and beautiful, so I cut the clothes very slim because I like to feel the clothes on my body.

I understand that I have a certain look that can be used to my advantage. I know the power of that when I walk into a room and talk to people, and I can use it as an advertising tool. Now I am actually selling me, my face, my thoughts. So I am my guy.

There is no more dramatic accessory than a perfect lip. It is the focus of the face and it has the power to define a woman's whole look.

Everyday is one less day.

Women are objectified in our culture. And more and more, it takes a great deal of confidence, especially as a woman, to break the mold. You know, you're afraid that you're going to covered in a magazine as a fashion don't. That's why you see all these girls on the red carpet looking the same.

I'm living the exact life I planned on living when I was five.

When you decide you want to make a film, you start listening to everything that anyone has to say about filmmaking and reading everything, and there's a maxim about film being a visual medium, and so you need to make, in a sense, a silent movie and layer on dialogue.

It's hard not to be sexy in a pair of high heels.

I think some journalists and bloggers want their articles to be clever, and the way into that is by writing nasty things. I think our culture likes to be mean. I don't just find this in fashion -- I find it in the news. More and more, it is about ripping people apart.

Oh my God, so many young girls now look like whores!

Keep your jacket buttoned. Always. It's just really flattering--it will take pounds off you.

I think people are sick of trends changing every six months -- not because we're tired of them, but just for the sake of change. There is so much junk in the world: junk TV, junk movies, all those junk magazines with the same people on the cover.

In my early 40s I started to feel that I had neglected the spiritual side of my life. It had always been there, but I'd neglected it. In fashion, that's really easy because we live in the future, and we can place too much importance on material things.

I haven't had any plastic surgery -- despite what people think, this is my nose. I have had Restylane and Botox, but I don't think of that as plastic surgery any more.

The Gucci woman -- you know what she's after. The Saint Laurent woman -- she's going to torture you a little bit. You might have sex, but she will drip a little hot wax on you first.

At home, off-duty, I wear T-shirts from Fruit of the Loom -- but I have them tailored.

France? I don't want to be anti-French but there isn't a more unattractive group of people on the streets.

Never, ever, ever wear anything you are uncomfortable in. Because that is what you'll project: 'I look like a fool.'

What's so wrong with vanity? It's different from narcissism, you know? It's not about admiring yourself-it's about taking pride in your appearance.

I want to make beautiful clothes for women and men who appreciate detail and quality. The product must be the best but this is almost secondary to the service the customer will receive.

Second-guess myself? Yes, I do. I question everything I do every step of the way. Once I make the decision I'm almost blinded by believing in it, and then I usually hate everything I've done.

I think people who are compelled to achieve never really think they've achieved... I think the moment you get to a place when you think 'Oh I'm a fashion legend' then that's when you're no longer competitive in your field.

I'm not designing clothes for someone who is doing lines of coke off the table, like I was when I was at Gucci and Saint Laurent.

I hope people will put aside Tom Ford the fashion designer and think about Tom Ford the filmmaker.

I'm a fashion designer. What I do is artistic, but I'm not an artist because everything I do is destined to be sold. That's not to say that you can't be an artist and a fashion designer. I think some designers are artists.

I think people who are attracted to the fashion industry are people who are really insecure and looking for a certain identity.

One of my favorite teams of all time is Fran and Barry. I just thought Fran and Barry last season were just incredible and they just sort of went against all odds and were very successful.

I'm extremely organized. The more things I have to work on and can bounce back and forth between, the more energized I am.

Fashion is everything. Art, music, furniture design, graphic design, hair, makeup, architecture, the way cars look -- all those things go together to make a moment in time, and that's what excites me.

I am not someone who likes cocktail parties or large dinner parties, but I have to attend them often. I much prefer very small dinners with close friends.

We have to have genius creative thoughts precisely four times a year and on exact dates. I actually write them on my calendar. I write, 'Friday, Nov. 8. Three o'clock. Have a genius creative idea.'

Just because one is spiritual doesn't mean that one doesn't like crocodile, cashmere. We live in a material world. We still experience these things. It doesn't mean to completely disregard them.

Dressing effectively is a kind of excellent manners.

It's really never fair to judge people because none of us know what's going on inside anyone else's head.

I think that they haven't been able to perfect a good facelift for a man.

A film should be somewhat personal. I think that whatever you create you have to be true to yourself and create something that feels right to you.

My own sex life is very monogamous and happy ... just a happy married sex life!

I am actually extremely casual in certain environments. But one of the reasons I like living in London, I like the formality of it, as compared to the formality of America -- or informality. I like putting on a suit. I like putting on a tie.

I like to just have fun and be silly and say pretty much whatever comes into my mind, do pretty much whatever I want.

You have to look inside yourself and you have to say, well, what am I about? Why does anyone need this? Why does anyone need a 'Tom Ford' jacket? What do I believe in?

Artists, like yourself, are born with a need to express that's just innate.

In my adult life I've understood that if I put an enormous amount of love and honesty into something, usually that shows in the end.

Want girls to let you put your fingers in certain places? Get a manicure.

I think that the older you get, the more you become your true, essential self. You find the things that make you happy. You whittle away the parts of yourself that mean less to you.

I do struggle because I'm attracted to beautiful things, yet at the same time I am actually very aware, in some sense, their lack of value and that the most important things in life are your connections to other people.

Moving fashion used to be one of my chief goals. It's not necessarily any more. Fashion needs to change when life changes. You only need to move fashion forward when there's a reason to move fashion forward.

I swore that I wouldn't be one of those parents who leaves a Bugaboo pram parked in the communal entry hall. Well guess what, ours is there right now.

People always ask me how I start a collection, and I tell them that I just look around. What am I tired of? What am I in the mood for? Real fashion change comes from real changes in real life. Everything else is just decoration.

If you don't need to quit drinking, you shouldn't quit drinking. I used to really love to drink, and especially living in London, it's just built for drinking.

Certain directors are known for a certain kind of beauty; it becomes their signature.

I suppose everything I do has sexual undertones, but I don't set out to make everything about sex. My clothes are more about sensuality. What I do is dress and beautify the body. My feeling is, if you have something beautiful, then show it.

Fashion is, after all, a form of escapism, and in fact people are buying more special things than ever, nowadays. They deny and deny themselves, and wait and wait, and then they get sick of it and spend to make themselves feel better.

I'm very aware that when my friends and I sit around over dinner these days, the conversation invariably turns to how crass the world has become. Tweeting? It's one of the silliest things ever.

I know one day I'll be irrelevant. No matter how hard you try there is a cultural moment, but eventually that window's gone, your time on Earth is finished, and you might as well leave. I could absolutely die tomorrow -- I would not care. I feel like I've lived, I feel like I've had a great life.

I don't wear a lot of color. In fact, I don't actually like color on myself. I love color but it's very challenging, it's very powerful, it can overpower you. I think if my eyes were closed and someone put a red jacket on me, I would be able to feel that it was red. I don't feel great in color.

Both film and fashion are businesses where the audience doesn't feel or see the work that goes on behind the scenes.

Anyone with a long-term partner, anyone with a long-term lover, if that lover dies, you could easily see yourself in a situation where you couldn't see your future and you would be living entirely in the past. It's about that loss.

The idea of losing someone that you love could throw you into a situation where you could not see your future and you really would be living in the past.

A lot of the things I did -- it's not going to sound anything but egotistical -- if I'm lucky and I did the right thing, they will be at Zara way before I can get them in the store, and I don't like that.

There are no right or wrong answers, There is only intuition.

I try to be nice, I try to respect other people, but over the years I've learned that all this stuff we do is a bunch of crap. That doesn't mean it doesn't have its place. We are living in a material world, so why not live with something beautiful?

We are living in a material world, so why not live with something beautiful?

When I was young, I wanted to be a movie star. But I realized that you have no control being an actor. So I went to architecture school in NYC, because I was crazy about buildings. Then I began to realize that I got more excited about Vogue coming out each month than I was about my projects.

Part of fashion is newness. It's got to be a new combination of elements that's shocking-stunning-beautiful all at the same time. But it doesn't have any emotion.

Part of my family were ranchers. So you were expected to be quite macho. You weren't expected to cry. I was the exact opposite of that.

I suppose, yes, I've been guilty of provocation but it's also just common sense marketing -- put a bottle of scent in a woman's cleavage, or between her thighs -- and men will notice.

A lot of people think a high armhole is restrictive, but it gives you total movement because it's cut right up to your arm.

I don't believe that clothes can start a revolution, but I do believe that fashion is often a manifestation of a sociological or political climate.

A few times in my life I've had moments of clarity where the silence drowns out the noise and I can feel rather than think.

You know that only thing that has made the whole thing worthwhile has been those few times that I was able to truly connect with another person.

I love to design. I am a commercial fashion designer. I always design jackets with two sleeves. I don't design jackets with three sleeves, or the layers and layers come off like little dolls from Russia. Fashion for me is a creative endeavor, but it is not art for me.

A good trick as you get older is to get a thick pair of glasses that have a dark frame. Everything else can droop and slide but that pair of dark glasses stays sharp and crisp. Look at Cary Grant. Look at Vidal Sassoon.

I'm very direct. I don't have tantrums. I don't yell or shout. I do expect an awful lot from my staff, but no more than I expect of myself.

I love fashion. What I love is the ability to express yourself, to be able to make a product and shoot an ad campaign that tosses you out into the world and lets you have a voice in contemporary culture, iconography. I felt a little bit neutered not having that voice.

I was not good at team sports, I have to say. I'm quite good at individual sports, but I was not good at team sports, so I wasn't good at baseball and football.

You should put on the best version of yourself when you go out in the world because that is a show of respect to the other people around you.

I think there's nothing more painful for anyone than unrequited love. If you've ever had that kind of physical access to someone and then, all of a sudden, that is denied, and yet you're still in love with that person, it's very, very, very painful to be around that person in a certain way.

When you write a character and their dialogue, you can't help imagining how you would be acting if you were them. You kind of have to relate to all of them. It's the most personal thing I've ever done.

In fashion as in life, the right thing at the right time is the right thing. The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

We've become a little spoiled with menswear in particular because, of course, we've come off a period in the '70s and '80s when Armani, which is very soft, dominated menswear. And we've become obsessed with comfort. I actually don't like that.

I interview these people all the time who come to my office and say, I want to be a fashion designer. I tell them where they should start, and they say, I don't want to do that. I don't want to get anyone coffee. Don't they know it is great to get people coffee?

If I were straight and I were trying to seduce a woman, I could do it just by standing up at the table when she came back from the bathroom. It works. Every time I do that, all the straight men are sitting at the table and their wives are kicking them. Look at that! You never do that for me!