Speaking with Vogue, out fashion
designer Tom Ford revealed that he never had to come out of the
closet.
Ford, 60, told Liam Hess that while he
dated girls in high school, he never had to properly announce his
sexual orientation.
“As for understanding that I was gay,
it wasn’t really something that I figured out until my late teens,
but then looking back at my childhood it all made sense, and I
realized that I had actually had crushes on many of my best friends,”
Ford
said. “However, I had girlfriends throughout high school, felt
that I was in love with them, and had a great sex life.”
“Even occasionally after I began
dating men, I continued to sleep with women off and on, and while
definitely gay, I am someone for whom sex is an expression of
affection and love. I simply fall in love with men most of the time.”
“I was very, very lucky: Coming to
terms with my sexuality was a smooth transition for me, and I owe
that to the struggle that all of the gay men and women who came
before me had to endure,” he continued. “I was living in New York
and my friends were all quite liberal and in the arts, and so I did
not actually ever have to 'come out,' so to speak, as I was never
really in the closet. My parents were very accepting, and in New
York, being gay or bisexual was considered kind of cool – or at
least it was with my circle of friends...”
Ford's husband, fashion journalist and
editor Richard Buckley, died last year after an extended illness. The
couple married in 2014, roughly 28 years into their relationship, and
have a son born via a surrogate.