Thomas Ford is a $2 billion-dollar-worth American fashion designer and film director. The majority of Tom’s net fortune was amassed in November 2022, when he sold his namesake fashion label to Estée Lauder for $2.8 billion. More information on this sale can be found in the section below. Tom Ford has served as the creative director of Gucci and YSL in addition to his own label.

He booked an absurd number of television advertisements after dropping out of New York University to pursue an acting career. He once had twelve spots going at the same time. He then received a degree in architecture at Parsons, but during his final year, he discovered his passion for fashion and decided to pursue a career in that field following graduation. He went on to work for Cathy Hardwick and then Perry Ellis before joining Gucci in 1990 as the head of their women’s ready-to-wear line. Gucci was in bad shape at the time.

Who is Thomas Ford married to?

Thomas Ford married Richard Buckley, a journalist and former editor-in-chief of Vogue Hommes International, in 2014; they had been together since 1986. The couple has a son, who was born via gestational surrogacy in September 2012. Ford and his family resided in Italy for 17 years after moving from New York in 1990. They stayed at his homes in New York, Los Angeles, Santa Fe, and London. Both Ford and Buckley had smooth fox terriers, which appeared on the runway and in his film A Single Man. Ford’s sister Jennifer’s children include two nephews and a niece.

In many interviews, he has stated that his first lover was the late artist Ian Falconer, who went on to create and draw the hugely popular Olivia the Pig children’s book series. Ford states that he and Falconer were excellent friends until Falconer’s death in 2023; decades later, Ford lent Falconer’s last name to the title character of his debut film, A Single Man[86] (the character originally just had a first name in the source literature).

Meanwhile, Ford, commonly known as Tom Ford, was born on August 27, 1961, in Austin, Texas. Shirley Burton (née Shirley Ann Thrasher) and Thomas David Ford, his parents, were both realtors. He spent his childhood in Texas, growing up in San Marcos, west of Austin, and in the Houston suburbs. His family then relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, when he was eleven years old.

In 1979, he graduated from Santa Fe Preparatory School. He subsequently relocated to New York City with the idea of studying art history at New York University but dropped out after only a year to pursue a career in acting, particularly in television commercials. Later, he enrolled at Parsons to study interior architecture.

He changed his major to fashion during his last year at Parsons after working as an intern at Chloé’s press office in Paris, but he still graduated with a degree in architecture. He met Ian Falconer, who introduced him to Studio 54 while residing in New York City. Ford continued to go to Studio 54, and it was there that he realized he was gay.