Tom Ford talks about Gucci, cocaine and influence

And more juicy bits from Tom Ford, Giorgio Armani and Santo Versace in a new fashion documentary.

Somewhere in the fashion multiverse there is a branch of reality in which Tom Ford and Domenico De Sole never sold Gucci to PPR. They never bought Yves Saint Laurent or Bottega Veneta or Balenciaga; never left Kering; never launched their own brand; and never sold that brand to Estée Lauder for nearly $3 billion.

Instead, in this alternate reality, Mr. Ford and Mr. De Sole struck a deal with Gianni and Santo Versace, created an Italian fashion mega-group comprised of Gucci and Versace, and changed the trajectory of not just those houses but, potentially, all of our wardrobes.

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That was the plan, anyway, in 1997 – at least until Gianni Versace was assassinated. Or a new feature documentary, "Milano: The Inside Story of Italian Fashion," reveals. includes a documentary on models from Apple TV+ and one about Vogue in the 1990s airing on Disney+ – which taps into the current pop culture fascination with fashion at the turn of the last century. It will deservedly premiere at the close of Milan Fashion Week on February 26, with a red carpet strewn with stars and designers eager to find out what other secrets have been uncovered.

"I'm not sure that all the houses will be satisfied", declared Alan Friedman, the former journalist who conceived and produced the film directed by John Maggio ("Panic: The Untold Story of the 2008 financial crisis") and independently funded. "I think some will be happier than others."

ImageGiorgio Armani and Sergio Galeotti, his life and longtime business partner, in the early 1980s.Credit...Beaver Lake Pictures

Part nostalgia trip and part corrective to narratives spread by docudramas like Ridley Scott's "House of Gucci" and "Assassination of Gianni Versa this" by Ryan Murphy, the film is above all a 10-chapter love letter to the golden age of Italian fashion: the 1980s. It was the decade when Armani and Versace emerged from the corporate stew families to become global superstars, shifting the balance of power in fashion and establishing the dichotomy between gender and sensibility that still defines the Italian industry today.

“There was this great chemistry from the late 70s to the 90s in Milan,” Mr. Maggio said, “when Italian fashion became a cultural export and Milan was the scene of all the love, hatred, passion, stabs in the back. …"

As such, the film is less about salacious expositions and more about context, eschewing the politics of the contemporary fashion world for the politics of capitalism family, with a rotating cast of 26 fashion personalities including Messrs. Armani, Ford and De Sole, Santo Versace, Rosita Missoni and Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce But while they are mostly content to set the record straight When it comes to their own stories, there are unexpected confessions and some juicy sound bites.

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