14 DAY TRIAL // The Love Issue of Out magazine features a beautiful editorial by fashion designer Tom Ford who, for the first time in many years, opens up about his longtime partner, Richard Buckley, whom he met when he was only 25.
At the time, Richard was 38 and, as Ford puts it in his piece for Out, it took him an elevator ride to know that he was the man he wanted to marry.
He was also the man by whose side he spent 24 years for better and for worse, with the worst including Richard’s learning he had throat cancer in 1989 and everyone assuming it was AIDS.
“I decided in that elevator ride that I was going to marry him. He ticked every box, and – boom – by the time we got to the floor, I was like, sold. He seemed so together,” Ford writes of his partner, whom he’d seen 10 days before at a fashion show.
“He was so handsome, he was so connected, he was so grown-up, so he was very intimidating. And he really chased me – not that he had to chase that hard,” Ford adds with what seems like a wink.
The famous fashion designer and filmmaker goes on to recall the dreadful ‘80s and how the community reacted to the first cases of AIDS.
He also tackles the topic of monogamy, which, he says, is still a mystery for straight people, who live under the impression the gays tend to stray more often because they’re plagued by commitment phobia.
Far from it, actually, he says. His own example is proof of the contrary.
“Often I’m at dinner parties with very close friends, straight, and they realize that Richard and I have been together 24 years, and the response is often, ‘Wow, you guys have been together 24 years! That’s so amazing’,” Ford writes.
“And I’m, like, ‘Why? What are you talking about?’ […] A lot of my straight friends have married and divorced and married and divorced in the time Richard and I have been together,” he goes on to say.
In the same moving piece, he recalls how Richard was diagnosed with throat cancer and how he went out of his way to remove from their life anyone who did not react positively to the diagnosis.
For the entire gorgeous piece, see Out magazine here.