Tom Ford Doesn't Have Nice Things to Say About Yves Saint Laurent

Director Tom Ford speaks onstage at the "A Single Man" press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel on September 15, 2009 in Toronto, Canada. (Getty Images)more pics » Bergé and Saint Laurent.
Tom Ford does not remember much about his time at Yves Saint Laurent in the 1990s, although it may be the fault of selective memory.

In a recent interview with The Advocate, Ford revealed that his time as the creative director of the legendary brand was fraught with conflict as he frequently butted heads with the brand's late founder:
But being at Yves Saint Laurent was such a negative experience for me even though the business boomed while I was there. Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I’d lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn’t until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices. You are not able to work an employee more than 35 hours a week. They’re like Nazis, those police. They’d come marching in, and you had to let them in and they’d interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down.

Pierre was the one calling them. I’ve never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn’t exist for me.”

Ford didn’t buy anything from the YSL estate sale in February 2009. “God, of course not. I have letters from Yves Saint Laurent that are so mean you cannot even believe such vitriol is possible. I don’t think he was high when he wrote them either. I just think he was jealous, and Yves and I were friends before I took over the company. But then we began to move the company forward and were very successful…he just became so insanely jealous…that phase in my life just doesn’t exist anymore.”
Ford is currently promoting his directorial debut, A Single Man, which opens in limited release next month.

Via The Cut

More pictures of Tom Ford:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•