Exclusive: Tom Ford — Don’t Put Words in My Mouth
No, he didn’t say it! On Tuesday morning, Tom Ford was the number-two trending topic on Twitter nationwide, and not because of his impending ratification to succeed Diane von Furstenberg as the chairman of the CFDA. The Twittersphere was ablaze with a quote about Melania Trump attributed to Ford but unsubstantiated by source or date: “I have no interest in dressing a glorified escort who steals speeches and has bad taste in men.” The quote proved unsearchable.
All fabricated, according to Ford. “Never! Never, ever, ever, have I said that Melania was an escort,” he told WWD on Tuesday afternoon. “I said on ‘The View’ years ago, before [Trump] was elected, that I would not dress her nor would I dress Hillary Clinton because the First Lady and the President in the White House need to be wearing clothes made in America — mine are not — and clothes at a price point that most Americans can relate to and my clothes are too expensive.
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“Now,” Ford continued, “I dressed Michelle Obama once and once only when she was in England for a white-tie dinner party with the Queen and I was living in London, and that was different. That’s all I said. I’ve never said anything derogatory about Melania. I never would say anything derogatory. It’s so weird, isn’t it, in today’s world the way someone out of nowhere can just make up a random quote and start circulating it on the Internet?”
As for various Twitter commenters noting they couldn’t find the original quote, Ford offered the simplest of explanations. “They’re never going to find it,” he said, “because I never said it.”
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