THE 2025 GQ FASHION AWARDS

STARTING WITH...DESIGNER OF THE YEAR

- BY SAMUEL HINE PHOTOGRAPHS BY FANNY LATOUR-LAMBERT

Haider Ackermann in Venice wearing his louche new Tom Ford. "You put me in a suit and two minutes later, it's like, debauchery," he says.

ON a beautiful evening in July, Haider Ackermann is sitting on the roof of his Tom Ford design studio in Paris.

It's golden hour on one of the longest days of the year, i.e., well past quitting time, yet the office is still frantic with activity. When I note the hour, the designer responds with a wistful sigh. “When you have a new love affair, you just want to go for it,” he says. “You don’t count the hours. You're not tired, because you just have this love going through your veins. It makes your heart beat and it keeps you up at night.”

The Colombian-born French designer was named creative director of Tom Ford in the fall of 2024, and the relationship had aroused all of men’s fashion. In fact, Ackermann’s March debut suggested that he might be the most seductive designer working today. In a small auditorium just off Place Vendôme, guests entered the dimly lit confines of a make-believe private room somewhere between the Studio 54 that Mr. Ford (as Ackermann invariably refers to him) used to frequent and the hedonistic clubs of Ackermann’s Antwerp youth. Once the preshow martinis were polished off, models skulked around the room in clothes that had a titillating, intimate edge. There were ’80s banker-pinstripe suits cut with long, languid trousers; silk robes and playful pops of color; a tuxedo shirt unbuttoned to the tank top underneath.