Tom Ford is daring you to bare it all with his seductive Spring 2027 collection, debuting Wednesday at Paris Fashion Week.
Creative director Haider Ackermann offered a contrast between exposure-focused racy swimwear on the runway and barely there underwear with what's become his signature sharp-tailored jackets, cashmere knits, and leather and silk pieces.
As designscene.net described his work, "The designer approaches sexuality as something controlled from within, giving the body agency over the gaze that follows it."
For example, one male model pranced in a crewneck sweater worn over a pale pink thong and a vicuƱa coat tossed casually over a leather weekend bag. He was followed by a female who strode the runway in a black cutout swimsuit, deep-V neck sweater, and sky-high heels.
Tom Ford Model on runway at Paris Fashion Show Spring 2027Courtesy of Tom Ford
Ford's Spring 2027 collection, Ackermann said, according to WWD, is about freedom, and daring, but also ease. The Paris fashion show marks the out gay Colombian's debut as Ford's creative director.
Their runway show featured a mirror which the site said provided the collection with its central image. "A placeless space where reflections appear and disappear," Ackermann said, according to designscene.net, "turning the act of looking into something reciprocal." Glass panes were positioned across the pitch-black room along the runway, enabling models to stop, view their reflections and observe one another through the glass.
Ford posted Ackermann's thoughts about the designs and his daring presentation on its website in a statement accompanied by a video from the runway, which is also posted on Ford's YouTube channel.
"A mirror is a placeless place. Reflections that come and go," wrote Ackermann. "Flesh becoming a halo. Provocation wants to be seen. Risk begins when one stops asking to be looked at. The reflection gives the gaze back: the gasp of another tilt, freedom close to the edge. Not to fall, but to feel that one could. Seduction is the pillar on which this house is built."
"Seduction remains fundamental" to Ford, an Out100 honoree in 2016, as designscene.net deputy editor Ana Markovic wrote. He allowed the creative director freedom, Ackermann said, to be "perhaps a touch more dangerous, which I havenāt done before. I was also searching for a kind of eccentricity, a decadence and freedom. Thereās more nudity than Iāve ever done before. But itās not provocative ā thereās just this sense of feeling free and taking a risk.ā
Ackermann, wrote Markovic, portrayed sexuality through a body that reveals itself without making an invitation, an attitude she said "shaped the clothes and the way models carried them on the runway."
"This time i felt like pushing it further, closer to danger," Ackermann elaborated in the online statement on Ford's website.
"There is something deeply sexual in a body that reveals itself without offering itself," he added. "In a gesture that feels spontaneous and perilous at once. Sexuality does not need to shout. It can be silent and powerful: a tremor under the skin. Fragility, likewise, is not the opposite of strength. Sometimes one can look like the other. Freedom is a form of decadence. There is the possibility of going too far, of staying out too late, of opening the wrong door and wanting to know what is behind it. I want things to remain open. A door at night. A gaze held a second too long. The trace of red on someone elseās lips. The feeling that something has happened, or is about to. I am not interested in provocation. I am interested in the risk of being free. Desire needs air."
