I was thinking... Clothes

Recently I read an interview with Tom Ford, the ambitious and successful former designer of the fashion house Gucci and YSL creative director. One statement that he made in the interview really caught my attention. When the interviewer brought up the topic of sex, he said (translated by me, I read the interview in Turkish): "I hate talking about sex. The thing is: People look so much better when they are naked. They are all the same color, and there is almost no fault in how they are built. You see somebody at the gym [changing room] and he looks amazing. But then he puts some clothes on..." (trailing off to disappointment, I guess?). I thought it was very ironic that such an influential fashion designer actually thinks and asserts that nudity is more sensual than being clothed.  When I first read Ford's words, I thought to myself, "If he is the one to say this, then hell with clothes. Why do we even bother?" And many other skeptic and insubordinate thoughts on how we are forced to behave a certain way by the society, the nudity of undeveloped and obscure societies, and so on rushed to my head. But when you ask most people, they would prefer some coverage over to being fully naked (and thus the money flow to brands like Agent Provocateur, Victoria's Secret and Calvin Klein). Some would even argue that complete nudity is quite unattractive. I'd argue that there is perhaps something carnal about being butt-naked, but then it hit me that our lives are structured so that we do not behave like animals. We wear clothes because we love the tease. All the paths to arousal and the satisfied cessation of arousal are structured into fun little social games (but I'd say in most cases, dramatic and unnecessary). So although Mr. Ford's words seem to denote that clothes are an impediment against what's natural and what we all secretly want to happen eventually, they also miss the point: Clothes are essential to the mating game of humans. Otherwise we'd be no different from rabbits.

But what do I know? When I was reading the wiki excerpt on Tom Ford, I came across the link of his long-time boyfriend Richard Buckley, and I have to say, I was utterly disappointed. Maybe Tom and I look for different things when we see somebody naked...