Fashion Designers as Photographers Edit
Tom Ford Shoots New SS ‘09 Campaign Himself

Fashion designer Tom Ford is following in the footsteps of Karl Lagerfeld and Hedi Slimane by shooting the new Tom Ford Spring/Summer 2009 ad campaign himself.

“I have taken pictures for years, but recently have become more serious about it and have started shooting portraits,” said Tom Ford. “I have always felt that an advertising image is in a sense the last layer of the design, and so decided this season to just shoot the campaign myself.”

Ford explains his photography style in the new Tom Ford SS ‘09 (you can see a preview of three of the ads in the gallery, the last three images).

“Fashion advertising lately has become very complex in terms of production, and I think that often, in these dense, heavily art directed campaigns, that the clothes seem to get lost a bit. I wanted to create clean, straightforward shots of a handsome man in beautifully cut clothes. Simple, clear, and fresh.”

Tom Ford is surely stretching his creativity outside the design boundaries. He is also currently directing his first movie, an adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novel, “A Single Man.”

While I agree that some ad campaigns can be a bit too complex and not perfectly showcase the clothes, having “straightforward shots of a handsome man in beautifully cut clothes” sounds more like a catalogue or lookbook than a captivating ad campaign. Ad campaigns are important to keep the brand name in the media and in pop culture, not just to showcase the clothes.

See some of Ford’s recent, not so simple, clean and straightforward campaigns below.