Meeting without filter with Tom Ford: “Some are endowed at birth with a voluminous testicular bursa. Others are born with small balls…”

Male Number: How are you? Tom Ford: I'm fine, thank you! And you?

I'm speechless, transfixed by your undeniable sex appeal. Yeah, yeah, yeah… [Laughs.]

What's it like to be Tom Ford? She's weird, your question... How do you know? I've always been Tom Ford, and no one else. I lack a few elements of comparison. I have a very nice life, I'm very lucky, so I would be tempted to answer you: "It's fucking fabulous!" I'm a happy man, so it's great to be me!

To what extent can we say that your daily life is just a dizzying whirlwind of young teens and pool parties, private jets and equally private islands, oiled masseurs and happy endings? Sorry to disappoint you, but young people, parties, alcohol and drugs are part of a bygone past, which has nothing to do with my current life. Today, when I'm not taking my 6-year-old son to school – or to a birthday, at the weekend – I'm up to my neck in work... And when I have a moment to I play tennis.

You launched your own brand in 2006. Why did you wait so long for underwear? I had already thought about it a few years ago, but until recently, to be a credible player in this market, you had to have a gigantic distribution network, without being able to control the appearance of the points of sale or the way the products were presented or positioned within the store. It was clearly not what I wanted for the brand. Then, like many people, I started buying almost exclusively online. Two years ago, I realized that it had become possible to directly reach a new generation of customers by relying primarily on the Internet for distribution. My line of underwear will therefore be sold in my own stores and with a selection of partner distributors with whom we already have significant volumes – which allows us to know how they are marketed and promoted – but it will be also available online, on a few carefully selected platforms. In this way, I think we will be able to develop the activity without compromising the image of the brand.

“Some are endowed at birth with a voluminous testicular bursa. Others are born with small balls… in which case it's best to stick to underpants in hopes of getting to a normal size before retirement.”

And you, underpants or underpants? Neither. Normally, I don't wear one. When I was at Gucci, people were obsessed with this question and I was asked it all the time. One day, at the height of my alcoholic period, I was discussing with a journalist, whom you know moreover, and whose name I will not mention. We were, she and I, totally cooked. At one point she said to me, “I can't believe you're not wearing underwear! Seriously, you're not wearing anything?" And there, I opened my fly and took out my penis. Richard [Buckley, Tom Ford's husband] grabbed me by the scruff of the neck to get away from the paparazzi, yelling, “Damn it! do you realize what you are doing? Zip up your pants!” Richard always thought I was a bit crazy because I always took my clothes off on Friday nights and refused to get dressed until Monday. I even dined naked, which really annoyed him. That said, since we had Jack [Tom Ford and her husband's son], I've started wearing pants again at home. When you have a child, you take on a nanny and, without even realizing it, overnight you find yourself with a whole bunch of people in your home. Now I've taken to wearing boxers when I get out of bed, to get my bowl of cereal, and also to sleep, in case Jack has a nightmare and I have to go to his room in the middle of the night.

Don't ask me why, but in my most shameful fantasies I've always imagined you in Calvin Klein briefs. Calvin Klein? It's funny that you could think that! I have never worn Calvin Klein underwear in my life. It's hard to admit, but I'm a little too old now to wear something so white and tight. You have to be lucid in life. If I have to wear anything, it will be cotton boxer shorts from Brooks Brothers.

Do you believe this urban legend that claims that wearing boxer shorts is responsible for testicular relaxation? Some are endowed at birth with a voluminous testicular bursa. Others are born with small balls… in which case it's best to stick to underpants in hopes of getting to a normal size before retirement. Beyond these basic settings, I don't think there's much that can be done against sagging in this area, regardless of which underwear option you choose. That said, I think we should really invent a testicular push-up system to bring all that up, like for women's breasts. After all, it's unfair: why shouldn't men also be entitled to techniques for enhancing certain attributes?

For your last men's show, you matched the color of the underwear worn by the models to their skin color. In your opinion, why was the nude shade previously defined only in reference to the nuances of white skin?

I don't know, and it seems very strange to me. For me, it was a matter of course to create a shade of nude for each skin color. Firstly, because I love the very idea of ​​nude underwear: if you're wearing nothing else, it looks like you're – literally – naked. I remember the 1960s, a time when many women, including my mother, wore “flesh-coloured” tights – if I'm not mistaken, Queen Elizabeth still does. In specialized shops, you were offered a whole range of tones, for pale, tanned or dark skin… So I said to myself: “But what a wonderful idea! Why hasn't anyone thought of doing the same for men's underwear?”

“The jockstrap? Unless you have a solid ass, it's totally unplayable. It is no longer wearable beyond the age of 21. Nobody wants to see half a kilo of flesh that looks its age, sausage like in the delicatessen department.”

Do you know the major international trends in this area? Does the Asian market prefer boxers to briefs, for example? Or do Americans prefer jockstraps over thongs? No idea. Maybe I should pay more attention to trends, I don't know. Prior to the launch, I did a market study: I ​​asked someone to go and buy all the underwear we could find in the stores, looking at the packaging, the prices, the type of point of sale, the presentation of the products… And then I said to myself: “But you, what do you want to do?” That's always how I do it. At the same time, our partner in this project [the Italian manufacturer Isa Seta (ISA spa)] has a lot of experience in this segment. They came to attend the fittings and they said to me: “Well, that length is selling very well, and it is on this reference that we make our biggest figure…” So I must say that there nevertheless had a real marketing reflection during the development phase.

Do men buy their own underwear, or do women do it for them? I would say most men buy them themselves. How could your wife be aware of how comfortable your testicles are in one brand or another? I never understood how a man could let his wife – or his girlfriend, or his boyfriend, whatever – buy him his clothes. It's something beyond me. In general, the result is not pretty to see!