People: ‘No one at Tom Ford is irate’ at Amal Clooney for the Met Gala drama

George and Amal Clooney are looking sharp after the Met Gala in New York

Yesterday, Page Six stirred up some drama about Amal Clooney, Vogue, Tom Ford and the Met Gala. The simple recap is that Amal wore a dumb, fugly Richard Quinn ensemble – with cheeseball satin pants – on the Met Gala red carpet, then as soon as she was inside the event, she changed into a red Tom Ford gown (seen in these photos), which is what she wore for the rest of the night. Richard Quinn got the big red carpet moment. Tom Ford did not. Apparently, Tom Ford was upset that Amal changed her mind about wearing his creation on the gala red carpet, but he accepted her decision and asked her not to wear the red gown at all. She refused, obviously, and her “wanting the Tom Ford cake and eating it too” moment allegedly pissed off people at Tom Ford AND Vogue. Now Amal’s people are trying to do damage control:

What dress drama? Despite reports that the team at Tom Ford was upset that Met Gala co-chair Amal Clooney opted not to wear one of its gowns on the Met red carpet hours before the event, sources confirm to PEOPLE that the tension is actually nonexistent.

“This has been blown completely out of proportion,” a source close to Tom Ford tells PEOPLE. “No one on at Tom Ford is irate and it’s a total exaggeration.”

According to the initial report from Page Six, the designers at Tom Ford spent “weeks” creating a Met Gala gown for Clooney, which she ultimately decided not to wear on the red carpet. Instead the barrister went with what sources told Page Six was a “backup” look by British designer Richard Quinn.

Vogue said in a statement to PEOPLE, “We thought Amal looked beautiful and we loved working with her.”

The team at Tom Ford is releasing no official comment regarding the matter.

[From People]

None of those statements is really a ringing endorsement of Amal or a complete denial of the circumstances. I’ll buy the whole “No one on at Tom Ford is irate” argument, just because Tom Ford is Tom Ford and every celebrity woman wants to wear his creations – he doesn’t need to start a beef with George Clooney’s tacky wife for publicity. He’ll be fine either way, and we’ll see if he ever creates a couture look for her again (my guess is “hell to the no”). I also think it’s notable that no one at Tom Ford would say anything on the record officially – there’s only an unnamed source trying to act like it’s no big deal.

And of course Vogue is going to vaguely have Amal’s back – Amal was the co-chair of the gala, for one, and while Amal might have inelegantly pissed off one of Anna Wintour’s favorite designers, Wintour is also trying to make Richard Quinn into a big-name designer, and this controversy helps Quinn and his designer name-recognition. Long story short, I believe Page Six basically got it right – Amal screwed over Tom Ford and Vogue was kind of embarrassed about all of it.

Costume Institute Gala  in NYC

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, WENN.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

48 Responses to “People: ‘No one at Tom Ford is irate’ at Amal Clooney for the Met Gala drama”

Comments are Closed

We close comments on older posts to fight comment spam.

  1. Really says:

    Wrinkly shiny navy blue pants. Hardly worth it.

  2. HK9 says:

    Hmmmm, I’m sensing this is fashion version of “I don’t know her”. They’re going to make nice in public, but I think it’s going to be a loooooooong time before Tom Ford dresses her again.

  3. Astrid says:

    The red dress Tom Ford was so much better. I doubt Tom will bend over backwards for George’s thirsty girl anymore

    • Millennial says:

      It was better but it was also boring af. She probably got wind that Rihanna was dressing like the literal pope and decided to up her game by at least choosing a controversial outfit at the last minute. I can’t blame her here. Tom Ford only gets his one shot, he shouldn’t have designed something so lame.

      • Ninks says:

        Yeah, I feel the same. The Ford dress is gorgeous and would be the winner on any other occasion. But for the met-gala it’s fairly blah. If Clooney was co-hosting and she was simply there as his plus one, then it would have been perfect. But Amal was the co-host and the Quinn outfit, love it or hate it, is much more dramatic and attention grabbing. I can’t help but feel that if she’d worn the Ford dress on the red carpet, then she would have been criticised here for being boring and playing it safe, as was the case for other actresses and models who wore ‘regular’ red carpet gowns instead of something more on theme.

        If she was asked not to wear the dress at the gala after opting for something else on the red carpet, then that was a pretty rude and really lacking in class.

      • noway says:

        If Amal thought she was going to outdo Rihanna she’s nuts. Rihanna is a performer. She can get away with wearing anything. Plus Rihanna has the bod and looks to pull anything off.

        I blame Amal, because she shouldn’t have worn it at all. If it was so lame to her, why change in the gift shop? I like the dress, but I realize fashion is personable. Amal’s allowed to not like the dress, but don’t be tacky and not honor their request to not wear it. I think she changed to get more attention. Two dresses is very dramatic, and that is just what all sophisticated lawyers do, LOL. If people don’t think this shows she’s a bit thirsty for attention. They are delusional.

      • Astrid says:

        I see your point now. The red dress was gorgeous but not really “co-hosting” Met Gala over the top.

      • Sid says:

        The right accessories and styling could have added the costume effect. I actually love the “stained glass” idea behind Ford’s design. A really gorgeous, eye-catching headpiece and a lovely hairdo would have taken it over-the-top. One of the things that made Zendaya’s look so stunning was the way every single part came together.

      • Emmet says:

        @noway Hi long time no see here!

        Actually it’s 3 dresses . . . so thirsty

      • Sandra says:

        She went a full half-way with both looks. She isn’t willing to be risky in her styling game, so they both look like she is wearing pretty dresses, instead of dressing for the stage to highlight the theme.

      • fruitsalad says:

        Yep, she did three changes that night. After the gala she headed to Rihanna’s afterparty sans George and wore a colourful cocktail dress. Might have been Gucci. The AC Style Blog had pics. This woman lives for the cameras first and the fashion a very close second.

    • Kosmos says:

      I love the red dress, too, so perfectly glamorous and so Amal!! The other outfit would have worked better if the pants perhaps were a long lean skirt? Just to dress it up a bit…..otherwise, it was very beautiful as well.

  4. Maya says:

    Tom Ford is known to not forgive and forget so he won’t dress Amal for a long time is my guess.

    • littlemissnaughty says:

      He’s a damn diva and I love him for it. But he’s also not going to stoop to a petty level in public. We’ll see if he goes back to his favs like Amy Adams.

    • fruitsalad says:

      Why would you, after this? Rude behaviour in any industry.

  5. abby says:

    eh, I actually did not like either look that much tbh but how she did it is the problem (if Page Six is to be believed). If Tom Ford asked her not to wear it without a red carpet debut then she should have respected his wishes. It’s just respectful.
    Tom may or may not dress her again – business is business – but he won’t forget.

    • Anon says:

      The flowered skirt was hideous but also a better red carpet look for this particular event. I mean, if you are competing with Rihanna-Pope and SJP with a nativity scene headdress, tasteful, elegant and subtly on-theme isn’t the look.

      If she paid for the Tom Ford dress then she can wear it whenever the hell she likes. If, as seems likely, it was on loan, or made for this event for free, then it is rude to insist on wearing it when you have decided to deny the designer the red carpet. The publicity is part of the quid pro quo.

  6. JustJen says:

    I can’t stand her. I hope designers avoid her, except Stella McCartney. She can have her.

  7. Nibbi says:

    this is so weird to me. such drama. and how dumb to change once *at* an event, wow.
    guess being a plebian i just don’t understand such things…

  8. Anon says:

    The parking lot photos are so funny. George isn’t being rude but he is clearly not interested in being photographed and just wants to get home.

    Next to him, Amal’s crazy paparazzi-hunting eyes.

  9. Brunswickstoval says:

    I feel such fatigue by this event in particular. I don’t know I get that we all need a break from reality but how amazing would it have been if the event was cancelled and everyone usually involved made a donation to flint or Puerto Rico instead as a statement of support.

    Maybe I’m missing something because I don’t know much about this met gala but who benefits from it? It just seems like a lot of thirsty people in extremely expensive clothes and it just seems flat.

    • VirgiliaCoriolanus says:

      One doesn’t negate the other.

      • Brunswickstoval says:

        I’m not following? I understand you can care about events and still want fun but my point is this event seems to me anyway to be such a waste as the point of it (if there is one) is lost in the chaos of celebrities playing dress ups.

    • grizzled says:

      The Met Gala raises money for the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute. It’s not saving any lives, but it is a bonafide charitable organization.

      I agree with you about Flint and Puerto Rico and wish the government would take responsibility for what has become an overlooked national disgrace.

      • noway says:

        Most museums primarily operate off of fundraising efforts, and this is the Met’s top effort and the Costume Institute is one of it’s more popular displays. I agree we have many life saving calamities which need fundraising efforts and better government action, but I don’t think you need to give up on the arts to save them.

      • Brunswickstoval says:

        Thanks for the info I’m not American so didn’t know that. Is Australia we only get the press about eg Blake Lively being stressed about some dress or another and in years past it didn’t bother me but this year it really has.

        I know those things are government problems I know it’s not the responsibility of others to fix I guess this event grinds my gears more than usual, possibly because so much of the media around it is on seemingly vacuous people.

  10. Tess says:

    I like the red dress better and I’m just sitting here blinking at the thought that girlfriend can have a team get her second dress into a gala, change, then take her big old pants/gown thing home for her.

  11. Mads says:

    I agree she is tacky.

  12. aaa says:

    I find Tom Ford and his ways pretentious and annoying, but he definitely has cause to be irate with Madame Clooney. Not wearing the dress on the red carpet is one thing, but to disregard the request to not wear the dress at all once the decision was made not to wear the dress on the red carpet was a crappy move.

    Perhaps Amal should offer to pay Tom Ford what a private customer having the dress custom made dress would pay.

  13. Pimo says:

    And just when I started warming to her, she reminds me why I disliked her in the first place. The wannabe-ism, the love of the spotlight. She wanted fame, sought it (I’ve read that she tried it with the young Middleton) and once she got it thanks to a marriage, she thinks she deserves it.

    That has been my problem with Amal, the over-participation and the lingering question as to whether she’s been made into something much bigger than she was.

    That is also my problem with Meghan Markle.

    Unfortunately they will be ruling the gossip pages for years to come, so I will be free to strongly dislike.

    • Anon says:

      Oh she has without doubt been made bigger than she was. When she met GC she was a very junior barrister. She had a great CV and had secured tenancy at a very good set and she had a lot of potential (and so do most because it’s a competitive profession to get into), but she was not a world renowned human rights barrister. Nobody is a world renowned barrister at 5 years’ call (even if they had legal experience elsewhere, because it’s considered a highly specialised profession). She had been involved in a number of high profile cases but those briefs come in with the QC’s name on them and the client then asks the chambers for recommendations as to juniors. In other words very junior barristers get work largely because of where they are, not who they are. Of course, she had to get a place in her chambers, which is a big achievement, but no way did Julian Assange call up and ask for her personally in 2011 or whenever.

      I am sure she gets asked for by name now, but I am also sure that that is in part because her career has had a huge boost due to being in the public eye as a result of her marriage. GC’s team did such a huge publicity number people think this is the career she already had, which isn’t th case.

      I always thought that it was incredibly sexist that GC’s team felt they had to spin her career to make out that she was an internationally renowned blah blah. It’s like what she actually had achieved wasn’t good enough, which was ridiculous. She was a promising and ambitious junior with an Oxford degree at a really good chambers. Obviously way brighter than him ANYWAY.

      • lamaga_hyun says:

        Thaaank you!! All of this.

      • fruitsalad says:

        +1, Anon.

        The top barristers and solicitors / senior partners at firms are usually over 50 (nothing wrong with being over 50; just saying it takes a lot of time to establish your career) and hardly like the glamorous legal unicorn George is trying to push Amal as. It’s a flat profession and you get a lot of capable lawyers, and it usually takes decades to become an established/leading lawyer. John Grisham’s rainmakers and legal outliers don’t really exist in real life, though George really, really wants us to believe she was some kind of legal one-of-a-kind wunderkind. Maybe in the tech, scientific, engineering, and arts-related professions you get outlier types but not in law, sorry. Not a creative profession and everybody’s expected to know their stuff, not create amazing products or art.

  14. Soc says:

    I saw the video of her on the red carpet and there is just something too much of a try about her. She was constantly fixing that train and some minders were running all over the place to fix it for her. Meanwhile, she was constantly trying to grab George Clooney’s hand so they can have the romantic shot. Then she’ll get obsessed about fixing her train again. It was just too manic. Exhausting to watch.

  15. JA says:

    If the designer requested you NOT wear the dress at all after last minute change to wear another designer for the red carpet then do NOT wear it. It’s rude and unprofessional to wear anyways. Yea the ugly pants outfit drew more attention but Fords beautiful dress could have its moment on another red carpet with another woman! Damn it ain’t that hard to understand…Amal disrespected Ford and embarrassed Vogue no spin needed. She’ll have to live with it and make amends or deal with the massive ego she’s creating for herself

  16. SueM says:

    OMG! She blew off that fabulous Tom Ford dress for that silly pants outfit! The Tom Ford dress was perfect for the theme, it was Cardinal red and it looked like stained glass church windows in motion. Utterly fabulous. Those drippy pants she wore did not reference the theme whatsoever and she was a Co-Chair of the event. I think she burned some bridges with Vogue and Tom Ford.

    • fruitsalad says:

      I agree. If the look was dressed up enough with hair and accessories I can see the dress making a big impact on the red carpet. Tom Ford handled this leak like a pro – expressing his displeasure then doing a kind of “she’s not that relevant for me to be angry,” and ending up with a lot of clicks for his label.

  17. MrsK says:

    Anna Wintour went into detail on Stephen Colbert about how Amal’s red-carpet getup was made out of disposable aluminum foil, and she had to change into the Tom Ford – in the Museum’s gift shop – because she was afraid the tinfoil wouldn’t last all evening. She was also careful to mention the name of the tinfoil getup’s designer. Everything except spell it out letter by letter.

    Suffice it to say, Amal Clooney is not going to be a co-chair of the Met Gala, and Richard Quinn will not be featured in Vogue, next year. Or ever.

    • Emmet says:

      Amal won’t be co-chair again because GC won’t pay for it again. As for Nuclear Wintour, she keeps trying to make Galliano a thing still so . . . who knows?

  18. Truthie says:

    The red stained glass was outstanding and classy, really stunning perfection for Amal’s needs. It does not suit her day job to wearing a theatrical pope/saint/angel/religious icon type of outfit so she was never going to win any costume of the year competition. But now the joke’s on her for ticking off Tom Ford!

  19. Anare says:

    Bear with me here, I really don’t like Tom For so I have an alternate theory. Maybe folks behind the scenes or even Anna Wintour were taking a little poke at Ford and his “I only create a dress for one woman per red carpet” pretentiousness. Maybe they enlisted Amal to burn him so he didn’t have a presence at the Met Gala at all. Maybe one of his minions leaked the story to at least get some publicity for the dress and Tom Ford. Now they have to do a quick spin so Tom Ford doesn’t look like he got gamed by Amal so they leak that Tom Ford is too cool to be bothered by all this.

    I think it’s hilarious. It was no mistake by a novice fashionista. Amal knows the ropes by now and had a bunch of handlers and pals like Anna Wintour and Cindy Crawford to steer her away from pissing off a designer. This was a deliberate jab.

    I usually don’t care for Tom Ford designs but that red gown is gorgeous. I am betting Tom Ford is super pissed at what went down. Amal DGAF. She has plenty of designers happy to dress her. She’s not going to try to kiss Tom Ford’s ass to get back into his good graces. She was the perfect person to enlist to take him down a notch. She’s high profile enough to get papped and make the scene but she can act all breezy like she was just having fun at the Met Gala. It’s all too funny.