Tom Ford Spring-Summer 2014 RTW Fashion Show

Being a filmmaker, a storyteller 'n' all, Tom Ford surely appreciates the classical Icarus-like dimensions of his autobio. But Icarus wasn't a phoenix. Tom is. All he needed to prove it was a situation where he could once again exercise complete control.

Tonight there were the vases of calla lilies, there were the plush banquettes, there was the handpicked army of handsome attendants, and—even more than last season's extravagant reentry into the fashion arena—there was the overpowering sense that the vagaries of chance have been shoveled into a corner where they will never again trouble the waters of Loch Ford.

And would chance even dare, given the collection Ford showed? He clearly purged himself of any of the Am-I-still-me? insecurities of new fatherhood with the I'm-still-me blowout of his Fall collection, so this latest offering was, in a way, a clean slate, which he set about dirtying with the sexed-up diligence that defined his finest hours way back when. Just check Josephine Skriver, the Sharon Tate du jour in Ford's pantheon of model goddesses. Her first look: a tank in black leather net over a suggestion of skirt in a black leather lattice. Her second: a pailletted micro-sheath with the serpentine shimmer of a Klimt painting. Toxically beautiful.

Key motifs in the collection were fractured mirrors and spidery lace. Given Ford's other job, they were unsurprisingly cinematic (let's say German expressionist) and maybe more difficult than the rather gorgeous broad-shoulder blazer in brown leather that opened the show. But that is the kind of dichotomy that defines Tom Ford—laser-eyed commerce here, lascivious indulgence there. Which sounds like a perfect formula for success in our cut-loose era.
by Tim Blanks, via: style.com