I don't mean this in an accusatory manner, and I hope I don't come across too much that way. But how you reconcile buying from and promoting (I'm using that term quite loosely btw) Tom Ford, a brand that has created some of the most infamously sexist and objectifying ads in the perfume industry?
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No this is a perfectly fine question, I don’t mind. I used to be totally outraged at his ads in high school and it was my Feminist Agenda to really tear them down. But that is just boring to me now. The man knows his audience – his audience likes luxury, likes smelling like money. He has the empire on unapologetic luxury and I love the smells. He’s good at what he does, and that is to push sex and glamour and dolla bills. He’s a rich gay man who knows his business. I also am okay with his ads now because I believe in the power of camp. And Tom Ford is not abusing the women in the ads like other douchebags in the fashion industry. I consider his women to be a celebration of a very specific kind of glamour and it would surprise you probably but those women are more diverse than you’d have thought given his real agenda is being a snob (he loves snobbery).
TLDR you can like problematic things and recognize that they aren’t perfect. I also find his ads kind of revolting in a sexy way. I don’t see them as meant for heterosexual male gaze on female’s but I see them as he directs them, as a gay dude who loves glamour and bodies and money and perversity and luxury and I like that idea because I want that idea myself. I mean, the smell of Tuscan Leather? It honestly smells like a leather daddy. It smells so, so deliciously queer. It smells like money and leather and rich sugar daddies who want to worship you and let you run the world.
*kanyeshrug* There are a bagillion things I care more about than to discuss Tom Ford’s marketing genius. I mean to even discuss them is to give him free dollars. TBH. He has and consistently does sometimes bother me but it doesn’t dismiss his genius at his craft.
