This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free.
The morning after Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford fall 2026 show, I woke up in Paris to a text from my cousin, Max, a 24-year old photographer who lives in New York and is—like a lot of his friends—obsessed with Tom Ford-era Gucci. Ford has loomed large in fashion for the past few seasons, even as the designer is happily retired from his namesake brand and is currently shooting a film in Rome. At Gucci, for example, Demna has tapped into a hedonistic aura by raiding the archive of Ford’s shrunken, sexy, clingy clubwear. The Tom Ford effect is also evident in the various other catwalks awash in leather and sequins, and in the silhouettes that are slimming and sharpening left and right.
Zoomers are snapping up archival Tom Ford for a bunch of reasons. It has just the right price-to-vibe ratio—it’s relatively affordable but packs a punch. The clothes also speak to an authenticity of the pre-social media age they never got to experience, where style was perhaps more honest and instinctive.
So of course my cousin was following Ackermann’s third show for the house he inherited in 2024. Max’s review was succinct: “Wow, that Tom Ford show was so good,” he wrote. And then he added: “Need those jeans.”
Courtesy of Tom Ford
Those jeans! Of all his peers, Ackermann is the truest steward of Ford’s legacy, and he’s also an expert dancer. He knows a thing or two about rhythm and crescendo. And after 40-some looks had prowled around the cream-carpeted catwalk on Wednesday evening, in a choreographed parade of wonderfully perverse Patrick Bateman-esque power dressing, the crowd was just catching its breath when a Nick Cave lookalike charged out in a chunky black cashmere turtleneck and a pair of high-waisted blue jeans.
Ackermann has turned out leather jock straps and miles of velvet in his fresh Tom Ford tenure, where his first two shows were electric exercises in seduction. But he had never shown jeans (arguably the most charged men’s garment). And boy were these enticing.
There was plenty to make the pulse race. Ackermann has defined his shape at Tom Ford with trim jackets and long trousers that pool over pointy leather boots. After waiters served platters of pre-show martinis (gin, with a twist), the boys who opened the show under a retina-searing white light wore their trousers a size or two too big, their belts slung over their bare hips exposing a slice of erogenous flesh. A trio of Wall Street characters wore banker shirts with kinky leather collars and slim ties tucked into their languid wool suit pants.