Last season, Tom Ford put on an intimate show of his first-ever namesake women’s collection for a select group of around 100 editors, sending the message that if you were someone in fashion, you were there. Somewhat puzzlingly, those somebodies also included a little girl, seated in the front row, who can be seen in Ford’s video of the show — released in a likewise very controlled way. This was not a blogger free-for-all, no Tavis, no Bryan Boys, the idea being to prevent anything about the show from leaking onto the Internet (though some did, inevitably, including camera phone snaps of Beyoncé, along with some other names in the model cast) before Ford wanted the material to be there. Today the Times credits Ford with turning other designers onto the idea of smaller, more exclusive shows.
And another thing: Children always wind up on the front rows, too.
