Sign up here to get it in your inbox. Ford has agreed to an exit interview capping his historic three-decades-long fashion and beauty career, saying he is willing to discuss anything and everything under the condition that I come to Palm Beach, where he is currently living with his year-old son, Jack.
Since stepping away from fashion earlier this year, Ford has largely declined interviewsβuntil this one. I have no mate, no partner, no adult in my life. I talk about, you know, Minecraft, YouTube, Messi. So just having an adult conversation at all is a bizarre thing for me.
The deal made him, personally, a billionaire. Ford and fashion journalist Richard Buckley met in an elevator at a fashion show in It was love, Ford has said, by the time the elevator hit the ground floor.
Outside, there is an occasional arrhythmic thud, which turns out to be Jack, who is running the length of the house pounding a soccer ball into a pair of nets. This is an unusually quiet moment for Ford. We agree to call it the second intermission in his careerβa break before the third act as a full-time filmmaker begins. Ford still delivers heroic doses of all his most recognizable personality traits: the impeccable old-world manners, the grandiloquent bombast, the devastating charm, and the outrageous provocations.
But over the course of our time together, he also reveals a new sensitivityβand more than a little heartbreak. So they had to put me under. So I put my PA. They conclude several weeks later over Zoom. Two hours and 20 minutes. No jet lag. Oh, yeah. I said, Look, I can fly. Which would you rather be? Richard and I lived in London for 22 years. Paris for 10, Milan for four. But this time, we moved back to LA from London because he was sick.
