Clothes for the Private Club

Attention all martini-swilling lounge lizards with a soulful side who have found themselves of late wandering, lost in a forest of athleisure and streetwear: You are about to be found. On Wednesday night in Paris, against a backdrop of gray silk and vodka, Haider Ackermann made his debut as creative director of Tom Ford and served up a recipe for the return of formality. Less dry; stirred, not shaken.

Guests milled around a room lined in low-slung banquettes, with mirrored walls — though not the sort of 1970s disco-mirrors that once characterized Mr. Ford’s own shows, but mirrors with their shine just slightly worn off; distressed mirrors. Black-clad waiters carried silver trays heavy with cut crystal lowball glasses. And there was Mr. Ford, who had sold his company in 2022, wearing all black and sandwiched between Jared Leto and Anna Wintour, waiting to see if his second hand-picked successor would be the right person to carry on his name. (The first, his longtime deputy, Peter Hawkings, had lasted only a year; no pressure.)

It felt like a private club without a name. The kind of place that if you knew, you knew. Though you didn’t quite know what would happen next.

Then came the black leather.

Leather pants and leather motorcycle jackets; leather shirts and leather ties; leather gloves and tailored leather car coats, all of it for both men and women. There was a lot of leather, but not a leather jock strap or thong in sight, which may seem like a random point (why should there be a leather jock strap?). But if you want to know the difference between Mr. Ford’s Tom Ford and Mr. Ackermann’s Tom Ford, that sort of sums it up: Mr. Ford liked a logo jock strap. The implicit proposition of skin on skin that was the foundation of Mr. Ford’s brand was there, but in a more discreet way.

And so it continued, both dutiful — Mr. Ackermann proved he understood the vocabulary of the brand, as it seems every new designer at an existing house must do these days — and promising. Nothing was too tight or cinched in. Which doesn’t mean it was casual. Many models, like Mr. Ford himself, were wearing black shades.