As part of British Vogue's weekend festival, designer Tom Ford sat with the magazine's editor in chief Alexandra Shulman for a tete-a-tete. While you may think that an interview between the editor of one of the world's most aspirational magazines and a man who dresses only the wealthiest, most sophisticated clientele would be polite as pie, but this is Tom Ford we're talking about here, and there's nothing more that man loves than a shocking one-liner. The Cut reports that when Shulman inquired about the sexual nature of Ford's advertising campaigns--especially those that place the designer in intimate poses with members of the opposite sex, despite him being gay--Ford replied, "We don't necessarily have to put boxes around everything. Have you ever slept with a woman, Alex?" Yes, Tom Ford asked the EIC of British Vogue if she had ever indulged in a sapphic affair....in front of an audience. She, of course, quickly informed him that she hadn't, before he went on to explain himself: "I hate to use the words 'gay' and 'straight,' and I think we're all on some sort of sliding scale. Of course, I'm at the Richard Buckley end of the scale, but I hate that gay/straight thing."
Read our story on Ford and his longtime partner Richard Buckley--from the February 2011 issue of Out--here.
