Husband of designer Ford was veteran fashion journalist
Richard Buckley, a fashion journalist and husband of designer and filmmaker Tom Ford, has died, Ford’s company confirmed Sept. 21. He was 72.
“It is with great sadness that Tom Ford announces the death of his beloved husband of 35 years, Richard Buckley. Richard passed away peacefully at their home in Los Angeles (on Sept. 19) with Tom and their son Jack by his side,” a Ford representative said in a statement.
The fashion journalist died of natural causes after a prolonged illness.
Ford, 60, met Buckley, the former editor in chief of Vogue Hommes International, in an elevator at a fashion show in 1986, when the native Texan was 25 and the New Yorker was 38.
Before being named to head up Vogue Hommes in 1999, Buckley did stints at Women’s Wear Daily, Vanity Fair and Mirabella after getting his start at New York magazine in 1979.
“Our eyes locked, and within a month, we were living together,” Ford once said on the Jess Cagle Interview show via People about meeting Buckley. “We have been together ever since.”
Ford added, “By the time that elevator landed on the ground floor I thought, ‘You’re the one.’ That’s it. Click. Sold. It was literally love at first sight.”
The couple’s son, Alexander John Buckley Ford, was born in September 2012 via a surrogate.
Buckley and family had moved to Los Angeles in recent years, after Ford bought the estate of the late socialite Betsy Bloomingdale in 2016,
though they reportedly kept their London residence as well.
The designer said in April 2014 that he and Buckley had gotten married in the U.S. Fourteen months later, a Supreme Court ruling would make same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.
“Tom has seen me through so much, from throat cancer to my brother and mother dying 48 hours apart, to more bouts of pneumonia than I can count,” Buckley told the New York Times in 2019, noting that Ford had sewn him turtleneck wool dickeys with keyhole slits for his tracheotomy tube and a black silk scarf with slits to wear at formal events.
Ford wrote about their relationship in an essay for the “Love Issue” of Out magazine in 2011.
He said, “Richard and I are bound together, and I think that’s what that recognition is when you look someone in the eyes and you feel like you’ve
known them forever. It is a kind of coming home.”
People from the fashion industry and those with ties to Los Angeles shared personal stories about Buckley and their condolences on social media. Friends of Buckley described him as a man known for his curiosity, kindness, wit and style.
Designer Rachel Zoe posted her condolences as well on Instagram, including a photo of Ford kissing Buckley’s cheek.
“We have lost such a beautiful and special soul, a gentleman of the greatest kind, Richard Buckley,” Zoe wrote. “To know him was an honor, to have had deep meaningful conversations with Richard was a gift I will hold tight forever. He was brilliant, witty, unapologetically honest and so very elegant. What was most extraordinary about Richard was his true love and dedication to Tom and as a father to his son Jack. I will miss you so very much Richard. May you Rest In Peace and with the angels friend”