Tackiness is a religion in America. It has leaders and cult followers, its own art and idols (all of which are false, by design of course—this is tackiness we’re talking about!). Its aesthetic is essentially pervasive. Americans do not fear Tackiness but run towards it; it is what excites us in music, film, and TV, and for better or worse, that has been the case practically since America was invented. (Cornucopias? Evangelism? A big masculine flag with a star to represent every state?! Camp.)
Tom Ford is the Oracle of Delphi to Tackyism’s Temple of Apollo. In fact, he built his own little Temple of Apollo last night, in an otherwise anonymous office building on the water across from One World Trade. The floors were mirrored (the better to see up everyone’s skirts, I guess!), disco balls hung from the air, and the seats were swanky rounded velvet sofas and benches. I sat squished in a plushy sofa in an “opera box,” while a Tom Ford-attired bartender served us cocktails from a mirrored bar built into the wall. (Mind you, this was all built for the show.)
By the time the celebrities started getting in their seats, which is the signal things are about to kick off, the little mirrored niche bar was filled with half-drunk cocktails and champagne losing its fizz, and it looked so right I wondered if Ford had designed these tableaux. But no, it was just authentic party atmosphere detritus. If the rest of the fashion world is drinking down a mood of opulence like honey, with everything looking sunny and couture-inspired and feel-good, Ford is here to remind us that the world is a decadent place. Decay is our natural state in the Temple of Tacky.
I finally managed to look up from my phone and realized: everyone here looks awesome. Madonna next to her daughter, just a few seats from Chris Rock, next to Katie Holmes…. There’s Russell Westbrook, there’s EJ Johnson in a magenta jumpsuit and red cape making Law Roach’s outrageous thigh-high boots look subdued…. After seeing all of the celebrities out at the shows this week (which is almost always a paid deal), I thought that finally everyone looked at home. Tom Ford is where celebrities belong, because in this religious order, they really are gods.
Then the lights went down and the show began. VOLUME! Big hair, enormously loud music, and blousy tops with nonexistent bottoms. (The soundtrack was a mash-up of pervy classics like Robert Palmer’s “Addicted To Love” with selections from Beyonce’s Renaissance.) Were these sequin sea creature-studded bomber jackets worn with just underwear, sequin heart-appliqued board shorts and metallic blazers, and a few looks I can only describe as “slutty Nudie Suits” tacky? Absolutely. And did I freaking love it? ABSOLUTELY.
A friend commented to me after the show that he couldn’t make out whether it was an ’80s or a ’90s thing, but it’s the Halston-loving Ford we’re talking about here. To this critic’s eye, the mood felt earlier: even the hair looked like the bushy manes of Donna Jordan and Jerry Hall when they were palling around with Antonio Lopez, Corey Grant Tippin, and Karl Lagerfeld in 1970s Paris. (If you haven’t read Alicia Drake’s The Beautiful Fall, put down this review and read it NOW!) The Nudie Suits with hot shorts were another hint. But what makes Ford’s channeling of a particular era and moment so charming when other designers’ similar efforts to party in the past feel flat? It’s that Ford is so earnest about what he does. This is a man who loves fashion, who sets certain standards and ideals and strives in every project to meet them. It’s a funny realization to have about someone who has been such a provocateur. But when I saw a male model come out in lace-trimmed black Tom Ford underwear and a leather jacket, I didn’t think, how offensive! But rather: thank God. Even the underwear tag, with its folded corners, was a high-fashion choice; as the writer and archivist Blythe Marks noted on her Instagram stories, that tag style is usually used to denote haute couture.
The last section of the show told us more about the inner id of Ford. The designer is a red carpet king—he regularly dresses Julianne Moore and Gwyenth Paltrow—and he told me in an interview earlier this year about his distaste for much of what goes down on that sacred ground of tackiness. The selection of gowns he presented here, to a campy-serious soundtrack of Freddie Mercury’s “Time Waits For No One,” felt like a thesis statement of what he thinks tacky glamor ought to be. Rather than avoid the cutouts and sequins that have made so much award show dressing monotonous, he elevated these cliches into something legitimately fabulous. First came the beautifully draped black cut-out dresses, then the sparkly gowns with exposed abdomens or pelvic-bone-high slits covered in plump sequins, styled with fat sequined hoop earrings. It had pathos. It was like a tender plea for a little rigor in our world of fashion chaos. And it wasn’t arrogant or a gauntlet thrower, but more like a palate cleanser: if we’re going to do this stuff, let’s really do it right.
This article originally appeared on Harper’s BAZAAAR US.