Tom Ford talks about the day he left Gucci and YSL in new documentary

Posted by Helen Lee at 9:06 am October 20th, 2011 | 1 comment

When Tom Ford left his position as creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent back in 2004, the fashion world wondered if he was ever going to return. Of course we know now, seven years later, that he does and is back with a vengeance and he opens up in a new documentary about himself.

Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind with Tom Ford airs this Sunday October 23, 2011 at 8 p.m. EDT/PDT on OWN, where Ford reveals that he was designing 16 collections a year for Gucci and YSL:

“I thought that I am never going to come back to this, unless I can come back in a way that changes the system where I have fun with it again. Because when I have fun designing something and I’m happy about it you can actually transfer that to whatever it is that you’re working on, a woman flipping through a rack will stop and say ‘wow, that looks cool, I want to try that on’.”

He talks to director Michael Bonfiglio about dabbling in the movie world with A Single Man (starring Julianne Moore, Colin Firth and Nicholas Hoult) and gives a tour of his design studio in London. We also get to see his return to womenswear design in September 2010 through to this February when he opened his Los Angeles store.

“I think the most memorable thing, actually, was when I finally showed Tom a rough cut of the film,” Says Bonfiglio on filming Ford. “I flew to Los Angeles to show it to him, and I was very nervous. Given how particular he is about his work – and especially because he’s a filmmaker – I was anticipating leaving the screening with ten pages of notes about things he wanted changed. We screened it at a hotel, and he brought one of his colleagues to watch it with us. I sat a little bit behind him, so I could see his reactions as he watched – and about 10 minutes in, I could tell he was pleased. When it was over, he had a big smile on his face, told me he loved it, and essentially had no notes – aesthetic or otherwise.”

The hour-long documentary Visionaries: Inside the Creative Mind debuts with an inside look into the world of iconic names like Ford, James Cameron, Tyler Perry, will.i.am and Annie Leibovitz. Check out the trailer of the Tom Ford portion of the debut episode below.