The Exact Moment Tom Ford Knew That His Husband Was The One

Tom Ford avoided engaging in conversation with Richard Buckley because, under his confidence and good looks, Buckley seemed “unapproachable,” Ford wrote in Out. “His stare was so intense that it completely unnerved me, and when the show was over I literally bolted out the door and down the street to avoid him,” Ford retold. A little over a week later, Ford had nowhere to look but straight into Buckley’s eyes. 

Ford was sent to pick up clothes at Women’s Wear Daily, where Buckley was the fashion editor. As fate would have it, Buckley was on the other side of the elevator doors and offered to take Ford to the right place. “He was adorable, and he was a complete fool … I decided in that elevator ride that I was going to marry him. I’m very pragmatic, and I was, like, ‘OK, there’s some kind of connection here.’ He ticked every box, and — boom — by the time we got to the floor, I was like, ‘OK, sold,'” Ford wrote.

In his last column, published posthumously on Air Mail, Buckley described being struck by Ford’s ambition on their first date, when Ford said he would be a world-famous designer and a millionaire in 10 years. “I sat there thinking, ‘Poor thing. He will become so disillusioned when the system chews him up and spits him out.’ That time, like so many others over the years, he would prove me wrong,” he wrote.