Tom Ford is always full of surprises, experimenting with fabrics, materials and techniques to have a show that really stands out. And this year is no exception — although it’s for a different reason.

Ford hosted his Ready-To-Wear Fall 2015 Fashion Show in Los Angeles last week instead of having it overseas as a part of London Fashion Week. For some, moving their show to a different country for fashion week would be detrimental to their brand. But if anyone could pull it off, it would be Ford.

Taking his fall show from London to Los Angeles allowed Ford to kick off the various Oscar events. It brought together his two professional careers — fashion and film directing — and put him in the Oscars’ spotlight.

As a designer who dresses a lot of A-list celebrities for the red carpet, the movement of his show allowed him to properly fit his celebs and still be able to focus on his own show. In most years, the Oscars fall on a different week than fashion week and provide no problems for designers with shows and celeb dressers.

While the move may have helped Ford, it inevitably caused some difficulties for spectators. Attendees of fashion week had to make the decision whether to attend the show in Los Angeles or miss the first day of London Fashion Week. That’s not an easy decision to make.

Even with that in mind, Ford was able to pull of an impressive number of appearances for his show. Celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Julianne Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow, Anjelica Huston, Jared Leto, Miley Cyrus, Amy Adams, Jennifer Lopez, Rita Ora and others turned out to sit in the front row, effectively blowing the celebrity factor of any other runway show out of the water.

He was also able to pull top fashion magazine editors — most notably queen of the fashion world and editor of Vogue Anna Wintour — and top models like Karlie Kloss and Cara Delevingne away from London for the first day of fashion week to watch and be in his show, something that is not an easy task.

Ford’s surprise also says something about the show system in general. These days, fashion shows tend to just blur together, each a procession of rail-thin models in designs with similar color palates and aesthetics. Few fashion shows feel like events — there are just too many of them, the process has become too harried, yet at the same time, routine.

Ford saw an opportunity to market himself and be different and grabbed it, but on a large scale, what Ford did isn’t a format that could work. Single, major-season shows in far-flung cities would be a logistical nightmare and very few designers are ballsy enough to do them. But by going to Los Angeles for a different season, Ford proved that there are alternatives to following the standard show approach. He used his creative thinking and took a jump into unknown waters and came out swimming.

Fords’ shows have always stuck out from the rest. He is known for keeping his runway shows and clothing lines extremely exclusive, keeping the fashion world on its toes until the first model saunters down the runway.

For a long time, he didn’t release photos of his collections before the runway show and only used high profile celebrities as the models, such as Beyoncé. The name Tom Ford was relatively unheard of until Jay Z released a song with the designer’s name as the title.

This year Ford decided to shock us all by using normal models and live stream his show for the first time. Provided that his show was halfway across the world from everyone else in the fashion industry, his choice was smart.

Next season, Ford plans to return to London for his show. It may be a little mundane, but it definitely won’t be boring.

Alexis McDonell is a junior magazine journalism major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at admcdone@syr.edu.

Published on March 2, 2015 at 12:01 am