Le Figaro's Virginie Mouzat Pans Tom Ford

Fasten your seat belts, it's gonna be a buzzy week. Indeed, when not chomping on Dior and YSL rumors, the fashion brigade is still reeling over what will surely go down as the most trenchant review in recent memory. Last Thursday, Virginie Mouzat, the fashion critic of the French daily newspaper Le Figaro, gave Tom Ford the kind of drubbing he surely hasn't experienced since Cathy Horyn described a Gucci show as "truly ugly" back in 2000.

It's not easily available online and it's only in French, so here's a translated summary of her scathing report...

- "The show quickly turned into a nightmare."

- "As soon as the first outfits came out, we were stunned by the dated quality of a collection that resembled his Gucci shows of more than ten years ago."

- She found the cuts "fussy and complicated."

- "The models were literally daubed with foundation." She likened the glossy lipstick to the color of a Ferrari.

- She then described a model as a walking catalog and described her accessories: Ford's new watch that looked like Cartier's Tank (watch), shoes that were copies of Azzedine Alaia's, leather track pants and sandals that recalled Céline's cruise line.

- "Tom Ford turned his client into an expert at vulgarity."

- "After what looked like a shopping list for Kim Kardashian, Tom Ford came out."

- She said he then asked his guests to stand up, but "people kept looking at their feet." Ford tried to speak, but he couldn't be heard because the music was too loud.

- "This baby-faced designer was desperately trying to ease the atmosphere." Then he kissed his companion, Richard Buckley, and Anna Wintour.

- "This Texan playboy, lauded by journalists in the nineties, is now the designer people don't stand up for—when they are not fleeing him."

Mouzat, who caught media attention last year when she was said to be a frontrunner for the top job at French Vogue, has rarely written anything as opinionated or withering. But we won't be able to tell you if we agree with her or not as Ford doesn't invite Internet journalists to his shows and doesn't allow photos.

• Posted Sep 26, 2011
• Comment
  Tweet