While plenty of designers, including John Galliano, Azzedine Alaia and most recently Alber Elbaz, lament the quickening speed of fashion, Tom Ford wouldn't have it any other way.
"I would lose my mind if I just did films and my next film [which he has written although he won't divulge more, apparently it's comic] is ready to go," the designer told Lisa Armstrong in the Telegraph.
"I enjoy the speed of fashion. I love doing different things and I think I still have something valid to say in fashion."
He added, "I tried to retire and I practically had a nervous breakdown. Actually, I wouldn't call it a nervous breakdown because you Brits are so sensationalist."
Ford is not all talk -- he really has been hard at work recently, launching a new beauty line as well as fragrance and bringing his new-ish womenswear collection to this month's London Fashion Week.
While he got rave reviews for his womenswear collection -- a glamorous array of dresses and sexy le smokings shown in an intimate presentation -- the beauty and fragrance collections are an important part of the Tom Ford brand these days:
"I love beauty products. At Gucci I'd spend days working with a make-up artist getting the show to look right. I was never drawn to walking in women's shoes that's maybe why some of them hurt. I never had a desire to wear the clothes. I'm probably the only man in England who doesn't want to dress in drag. But make-up? That I'm serious about."
That's a shame, Tom -- why no drag? It must be because, as his close friend Carine Roitfeld informed us the other day (via the New York Times), "O.K., Tom, unfortunately for the woman, is gay. But he is very not so gay."