Tom Ford Brings Sexy Beauty Back With Layered Lids and Sleek Side Parts

Tom Ford loves a smoldering eye. Like a power-packed front row—his fall show, staged in Los Angeles over Oscars weekend, counted almost too many A-listers to mention (J. Lo! Renée! Miley!)—this is fact. Even Ford’s spring collection, which he showed in a New York subway station with nods to ’80s punk, featured smoky, sooty shadow as a part of the beauty story. So when hairstylist Duffy called last night’s look—sultry lids and impossibly slick side parts, straightened and folded into flattened French twists to create the illusion of a tight, masculine crop—a “return to Tom’s girl” backstage, it was a hint that the glamour quotient was about to be turned way up.

Through mists of L’Oréal Elnett hairspray and Oribe texturizing spray, there were other hints: of Jean Seberg and Twiggy, gamine ’60s beauties, with swanning necks that peeked out from cutoff sweatshirts paired with bias-cut skirts and sheer, billowing tunics worn over sweatpants on Ford’s runway, a nod to a certain kind of laid-back L.A. glamour accessorized with flower hairpins made of feathers. But makeup artist Diane Kendal’s mention of two early-noughties supermodels—Erin Wasson and Jacquetta Wheeler—resonated most. As Bella Hadid started her slow-motion walk in one of Ford’s evening looks, you could just make out her feline-featured predecessors thanks to Kendal’s “layered eye”—a meticulous building effort of smudged liners and shimmering shadows in shades of gold, brown, red, and pink from four different Tom Ford Eye Color Quads, including Body Heat, which features a dusty copper rose pigment, which was dusted underneath a slick of gloss for iridescence. Kendal’s modern, 2020 riff? Clean, poreless skin treated to a wash of Ford’s new Shade and Illuminate foundation. “He wants the girls to look sexy,” she said, a word that has become somewhat verboten these days. Mission decisively accomplished.