Tom Ford Delivers Serious Sex Appeal

Last season Tom Ford held his debut London show in one of the royal palaces, just around the corner from Buckingham Palace.

But for his Spring/Summer 2014 collection, which showed in London on Monday night, Ford fans—including Anna Wintour, Hamish Bowles, Cate Blanchett, and Colin Firth—found themselves in a very different kind of venue: a giant hall near the river covered in wall-to-wall mirrors. Combined with the low lighting and black carpet, the effect was to give a distinctly clubland vibe.

It was only appropriate then that the central part of the show was taken up by clothes suited to (millionaire) club kids: figure hugging skirts, mini-dresses, and micro-suits covered in crystal. Indeed, the crystals were so plentiful, so all encrusting, that they had the curious effect, under the lights, of turning the models into human mirror balls. There were high-throated skintight dresses that refracted and reflected so comprehensively, to wear them would be to risk being mistaken for a hologram in a Hollywood movie.

Studio 54, eat your heart out.

The theme of London Fashion Week has been, overall, toward a soft, yielding, trusting vision of femininity. Who could really be surprised that Tom Ford would react by making his own hard, uncompromising vision of sex and beauty even harder and fiercer than ever?