Getting Naked.(designer Tom Ford's new makeup line)(Interview)

Getting N aked

At Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, designer Tom Ford proved ?that sex sells. Now heis getting ?down and sultry with a new ?makeup line. By Linda Wells

T

om Ford canit help it. When he sees something he doesnit like, he just canit sit still. And at the photo shoot for this story, he doesnit like the modelis hair. He sticks his hands in her puffed-up pompadour and strokes her head until the thing flops slightly to the left. Now he can breathe again. I needed to break up her hair,I he explains.

Ford is breaking up all sorts of things. After leaving Gucci last year and disappearing from the public eye for what seemed like a decade (but was really only six months), heis back, designing a line of makeup and fragrance for Estee Lauder, called, straightforwardly, The Tom Ford Estee Lauder Collection. It isnit what most people would have predicted as his second act.

But Ford is sincere in his mission to remake women, or at least to remake their makeup. A lot of people donit know what they want until you tell them, especially with beauty,I he says. I donit know how many women have the eye to look objectively at themselves.I Ford believes he does, and he is examining every single little detail.

Lip gloss and lipstick bug him. Iim tired of all these girls sitting around using that lip gloss applicator. It looks gross and cheap, and I just donit want to look at that anymore. I wouldnit want to be darkening my lip with that little sponge applicator, yet I wouldnit want to be caught dead with a lipstick. It feels like my motheris generation, just the stubbiness of it.I He hasnit found a way around this problem yeto?his new line has ?five lipsticksobut heis working on it. Lipstick itself seems so old-fashioned, really. But the one thing I hate more than anything is a lip pencil. I hate that defined edge. I hate it, I hate it.I