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Anna Wintour: as Editor-in-Chief of “Vogue,” co-chair of the Met Gala since 1995 and the inspiration for the character Miranda Priestly from “The Devils Wears Prada,” she is one of fashion’s biggest names. She is known for her iconic sharp blonde bob and her impeccable eye for upcoming fashion trends; so much so that her approval is like the word of God. Weight is added to her word, of course, by the fact that she personally arranges the guest list for the Met Gala, also known as “fashion’s biggest night.” That kind of power means that only the most fashionable guests, by her standards almost solely, are invited to the most-watched fashion event of the year.
Anna Wintour, for all the likely hundreds of runway shows she has sat front row for in her career as fashion’s caretaker, has only given a standing ovation to seven of them. It would take two hands to list them, but only just. The seventh and most recent Anna Wintour standing ovation was given during 2025 Paris Fashion Week in March to Haider Ackermann’s debut show as creative director for Tom Ford. The trouble is this: I cannot for the life of me figure out why.
There are several lenses through which people can enjoy fashion. Arguably the most obvious way to see it is through the status symbol of it all: a Louis Vuitton bag covered in the logo, a pair of jeans made by Dolce & Gabbana rather than Levi’s. If you need some eyes on fashion, you can always get some outrage attention by showing a price tag. For some, that’s all fashion is — a status symbol for those who have the money to pay $1,000 for a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.
Another lens to see fashion through is that of craftsmanship. There are entire designer labels devoted to impeccably made, perfectly tailored, high-quality suits. When you watch a show like “Project Runway,” this is often what the judges are looking for; whether it’s artistically innovative or not, a look had better be high quality.
My personal favorite lens to see fashion through is that of artistic value. I’m a big fan of the strange and weird, and I seek that out in my clothing. However, strangeness alone is not pulling at my heartstrings. Ugly or beautiful, something I would wear or not, I seek looks that tell me not only who a designer is, but also why they matter in the art world. I want them not to drip into the bucket of trendy clothing, but to give me something new to look at. I want to see imagination; I want to gasp with delight and intrigue. I pay attention to fashion because I want to live in a world that is constantly reconsidering what clothing can look like.
Tom Ford’s Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear show featured 57 looks, only one of which made me gasp with delight and intrigue. The look was number 37, worn by Alex Consani. At first blush, it looks like a butter yellow dress with a crazy high leg cutout. But as she walks down the runway, a careful observer can see that actually the piece is essentially a jumpsuit with one leg missing. The gorgeous drape of the abundant fabric on the side of her body that is covered contrasts starkly with the bare leg and tight sleeve of the other side, creating a gasp-worthy silhouette. That is about where the intrigue stops. That look is part of the latter half of the show, which is bright and colorful in opposition to the harsh gray, black and leather of the earlier half. The show throughout plays with texture, presenting a fuzzy brown coat at one point and lots of models sporting leather ties. There are, in fact, innovative artistic choices made within the collection, particularly surrounding the interesting use of leather to make things like t-shirts, ties and coats which are striking, as those things are traditionally made of softer materials. However, that imaginative play is done secondarily to a wave of high-quality boring.
Tom Ford is known for its menswear, thus the abundance of suits on both men and women in this show. Those silhouettes, repeated over and over in different colorways, are utterly familiar; one could even say redundant. At one point in the show, the exact same women’s suit walks down the runway in three different bright colorways, one right after the other. While the colors are fun, the suit, though repeated three times as if for emphasis, is unfortunately unremarkable. I am unqualified to speak to the tailoring and craftmanship quality of each piece — they all look nice to me — but I have to assume that those are the points Tom Ford is going for in repeating such fashion standards.
Anna Wintour’s standing ovation at a show like this, when my breath has been totally heisted by so many others, is an interesting invasion of my little bubble of young-adult taste. I assuredly understand two things: I, as a 20-year-old who is nowhere near the fashion industry in proximity and have barely entered the adult world, am not the pinnacle of artistic taste. I also understand that Anna Wintour, though highly respected in the fashion industry and proven as a titan of trendsetting over decades of work, is also not the ultimate, god-like decider of what is good and what is bad.
While I understand my youthful fallibility as a tastemaker, I do advocate for a particular lens through which to view fashion. Events like Anna Wintour’s standing ovation for something as apparently unremarkable as Tom Ford’s Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear show implies to me that the culture of fashion enjoyment is largely centered around high-quality standards. This is disappointing to me as someone who is so deeply inspired by the creative innovations of the modern fashion industry. I think fashion ought to be valued for far more than its ability to regurgitate basics in slightly different colors; fashion ought to be a bastion for uninhibited creative expression. Despite the word of fashion’s trusted overseer, I will continue to search for shows that put stars in my eyes, not regular suits on rich people.