From Beyonce to Miley, Scarlett to Reese, most celebrities and editors attending the Tom Ford fall 2015 wore a Ford creation to commemorate his Los Angeles debut. Their outfits served as a sign of respect toward the Texan-born designer; the elite locals wanting to thank Ford for choosing to show in their city. And there were some foreign regulars on the red carpet.
“Everyone and their sister is either leaving London or didn’t go to London to be here,” Eva Chen, editor-in-chief of Lucky magazine, told Yahoo Style, at the Tom Ford fall 2015 show on Friday.
“I think it’s incredibly smart and business-minded of him to show right before the Oscars…LA is just starting to turn toward that kind of fashion city and I hope this cements its status.”
Given the enthusiastic turnout and the energy that ripped through the air from the very first runway look, the city’s growing luxury scene is ready for more high-end designers to establish themselves as Californian locals, or at least show there. After decades of being better known for surf wear and denim, LA has in the past few years become a quasi-hub for luxury design. Ford himself purchased a home in Los Angeles in 1996. Since then, he passes two months of every year in his Bel-Air home. Still based in London, he credits the internet and social media for LA’s more switched-on approach to luxury.
“LA has changed,” Ford told the Financial Times last week. “It has developed more of a patina. In the days before the internet, there was often a bit of a style lag: things caught on in other cities and took a little while to filter to Los Angeles. That’s not the case now.”
LA has a tremendous amount of local design talent to keep Ford company. Saint
Laurent’s Hedi Slimane and urban luxe brand Band of Outsiders have set up home
in the city setting the scene for ultra-sleek menswear. Meanwhile, newcomer Rosetta Getty
and cashmere expert The Elder Statesman, are patriotic Californians. And
then there’s the beautiful haute-couture offering, Rodarte, founded by Kate and
Laura Mulleavy in LA, back in 2005.
Design heavyweights are surrounding themselves with some of the world's most noteworthy photographers, stylists and contemporary artists, who also base themselves out of LA, adding to the city’s thriving creative scene. Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca) is helping the design push. The center regularly shows fashion exhibits, including a recent dress series by Rodarte, which then moved onto the renaissance art section at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Publicly celebrating Rodarte’s exquisite construction and fairytale fabrication creates huge exposure for the local designers and encourages newcomers to pursue similar design routes.
The Council of Fashion Designers of America is heavily invested in LA. Last year it launched a whirlwind week of CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund events in the city, positioning LA as a buzzing fashion capital. A dinner was organized for the finalists of 2014. Hosted by Diane von Furstenberg, Dakota Johnson and Diana Agron were in attendance at the gala. The new designers networked with the actors and talked about their designs casually over drinks with editors – an occasion made possible with Hollywood being so close by.
Showing his latest collection close to Hollywood was a no brainer for Ford - given his pre-scheduled London show would have clashed with the Oscars. LA's star inhabitants are becoming increasingly vital to designers. Ford knew the important ones (notably muse and Oscar winner, Julianne Moore) wouldn’t have sat perched front row like they did Friday night, had he stuck with a UK show.
After the huge turnout, Ford isn’t ruling out the possibility of staging the event in LA again.
"I thought it was a one-off thing but now I have to take a little distance from it. Was it good? Could I recreate it? Did (people) love it so much they would come again every year?" he hypothesised.
Loved it? LA’s fashion heavyweights couldn’t stop relishing the moment. Or make predictions about the future.
“I couldn’t be more excited,” stylist Rachel Zoe, told Yahoo Style at Ford’s fall show. “Maybe Marc Jacobs will be next? I hope Tom’s starting a huge trend.”