Tom Ford Quotes

I never, ever want to apologize for a film. If it's bad I'll say it's my fault. And that's what I can say so far in all the films that I've done, that if you don't like it, it's entirely my fault.

Every designer has to stand behind and believe in what they are creating.

For me to be able to punch above my weight creatively, to actually take a stand for what I was doing, I had to take on everything. I had to be the person who says, 'I wrote it. I directed it.'

Every prop, every shot, every pearl that rolled across the floor was exactly how I wanted it to be.

I know my audience, and they, in turn, know my cinema. When I pick a subject, it's for a family audience. I shoot and edit my films keeping them in mind. I'm dead sure about the product that bears my name.

I'm a control freak. If you're going to slap my name on something, I would like to control it.

I prefer to believe it's my responsibility if a film of mine works or doesn't work.

My name is on the door, and I care very much about the design that gets put out. I'm sorry, but it has to be my way. You learn that by working for people like I. M. Pei. You think he isn't a design tyrant? Is Calvin Klein a tyrant? When it came to his dresses, he had to be.

I'm a big perfectionist, and I like to make sure everything 120 percent, from the production to the vocal performance to the lyrics, the melody and everything.

The pressure is always very high. I am the client, and when I am the client, I need to fight with the photographer or with the stylists or with all the people that are on the set, because I am the only one who has a very specific vision. I always have the pressure, either from myself or from the company. I am a control freak. It's part of my culture. I know that I am still working to build a Frida moment at Gucci.

It's not the norm when creators have any protections with regards to creative control. And so it took some time, I think, for the strip to gain enough popularity where I had enough leverage to come in and say, "It has to be done in a certain way or it's not going to be done at all," and then have people willing to put up with that who were ultimately paying for it. You know, for them to be willing to kind of concede those kind of things. It just takes time, you know?

Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.

I often say to my assistants, "Never trust anybody," but what I mean is that you should never trust someone else to do a job exactly the way you would want it done.

Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children.

I've come to a point where I just want to do movies that I just believe in. I have come to an understanding of filmmaking, a new understanding where I believe it's a director's medium. That means working with people that I believe in.

Audiences, as they get smaller, can intensify their relationship with the product, and so can the creative relationship with the people that you are serving. The good news is that, the more shows there are, the less the conglomerates have to gain by breaking the will of each individual creative.

I have an association that director means total authority. Director means they will never let you down. Director means just trust them and fulfill their vision, and know that the story will be told in its best incarnation.

Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals.

With expensive fashion, the inside should be as perfect as the outside.

This way, if I did the album myself, and I produced it myself with my own label, it was going to be done the way I wanted to do it. If people like it or don't like it, it doesn't matter; I got something that means something to me.

I wanna produce, write, and direct my own projects, and eventually fund them. I wanna be a mogul.

I can't go on to page two until I can get page one as perfect as I can make it. That might mean I will rewrite and rewrite page one 20, 30, 50, 100 times.

I mean, yeah, Anne Fletcher was a choreographer, but she was born to be a director. You need to have the ability to figure out people's rhythms. It all starts from the script.

I have so much music to release, but I'm meticulous. I'm like, "You've got to redo that part, redo that part." And people are like, "Just forget that and go ahead with it." But it's all about perfection, about trying to make it as good as you can.

If you are never satisfied with what you write, that is a good sign. It means that your vision can see so far that it's hard to come up to it. Again I say - the only unfortunate people are the glib ones, immediately satisfied with their work. To them, the ocean is only knee-deep.