The Gucci Optimist
Tom Ford, the 37-year-old creative director of Gucci, recently purchased a 1955 Bel-Air home designed by Modernist master Richard Neutra. Mary Melton talked with the Austin, Texas, native about living in L.A., optimism and Gucci’s Beverly Hills store, which relaunched last week with a design by Ford and interior architect William Sofield.
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Q: Tell us about your L.A. house.
A: It’s in a rubble. Luckily, it hadn’t been touched, but that’s also the bad thing. We’re opening it up to the two-by-fours--new plumbing, new wiring. We pulled out cabinets, are having them redone and put back in. Hopefully, you’ll walk in and it will look like the day it was completed.
Q: How’d you find it?
A: A friend said, “You should see this house.”
Q: How does it compare to your other homes?
A: My house in London is Victorian. My house in Santa Fe is adobe--mud floors and mud walls. It was built by my grandmother, who was very influenced by the designer Alexander Girard, who I was just reading was credited with having invented the conversation pit. What a thing to be associated with! My house in Austin is a typical Texas ranch-style house. My apartment in Paris is so ornate, it’s beautiful, looking across the Seine. None of them excites me like the one in Los Angeles.
Q: What is it with you designers and Neutra?
A: It’s like living in a piece of art.
Q: Does it make you feel optimistic?
A: Yes! I’m a Virgo. I can’t live in a lot of clutter. If my outside world’s a mess, I’m a mess inside. I have a view over the city and ocean. You couldn’t be depressed in this house.
Q: A lot of people find L.A. bleak.
A. L.A. is such an optimistic place, from the way the freeways are shaped, or when you get out of the airport and there’s palm trees and sun. The space is so much more open than in Europe.
Q: Does the new Gucci store also reflect your aesthetic?
A: There’s a lot of Neutra in it, though it’s not a literal mid-century modern design. Hopefully it will be timeless, though nothing in retail is. The thing about good design is you don’t have to be told what it is, you just know you feel good in a certain place.
Q: So optimism translates in retail?
A: My main exposure to kids is a lot of models we use, 18 or 19 years old. I was talking to them, and there was a real gloom. “I’ll probably die of AIDS; I’ll never make as much money as my parents.” I feel this is changing. There are the advances in medicine; world economies, though it’s been a bumpy ride, are doing well. I try to capture that optimism in architecture.
Q: How so?
A: They’ll think, “Wow, this is great!” and enjoy time spent in the store. We have wall-to-wall carpet, walls upholstered in mohair, the lines are clean.
Q: What do you do when you’re in town?
A: Nothing makes me happier than lying in the sun--I know it’s not good for you. It is one of the best places in the world for vintage clothes. If it’s the ‘40s or the ‘70s, whoever had it didn’t just have it, they had all of it. I find it amazing.
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