(Photo: Patrick McMullan)

In the November issue of Out magazine, cover boy Tom Ford says he doesn’t have time to “reinvent the way that women’s fashion works.” He wishes he could reinvent the word gay, though. “If I were art directing the creation of a word that would describe homosexuals I think I might have tried to find another word. Gay makes us sound silly and frivolous, which is probably where it came from originally—it was first used in a Cole Porter song in the thirties—and I think it was probably a bit derogatory, and so it’s not a word I necessarily like, but it’s what I am, whatever, it’s fine.” He was also fine with a nude boxing-themed Terry Richardson photo shoot in which he flicked towels at male models. One shot, featuring a bottle of Ford’s fragrance nestled in a man’s butt crack, didn’t make it to print, and Ford wants to use it for his next ad campaign. Although Ford is usually fine baring it all to the world, there was one time when his penis could have cost him a spread in Vogue. Early in his career, Ford was strolling nude along the beach in St. Barts when he breezed right past Anna Wintour. “I said, ‘Hey, Anna,’ ” said Ford, “and then thought, ‘Hmm, maybe I ought to start putting on my clothes.’ ”

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Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Jada Yuan
• Table of Contents: Oct 15, 2007 issue of New York | Subscribe!