Tom Ford felt he had "no voice" when he quit Gucci.
Tom Ford
The 55-year-old fashion designer, who was named the creative designer of the luxury fashion house in 1994 after being part of the creative team four years prior, has admitted he "never" thought he would leave the business ten years later in 2004.
Speaking to PEOPLE about his time at the designer brand, Tom - who launched his eponymous label in 2004 - said: "I did take my own aesthetic and craft it on to the house of Gucci, and when i left Gucci i took it with me.
"Well everyone was fired except from me. I was still there. I kept my head up and tried to take charge, which is my character and personality. But I worked with Maurizio Gucci for a period of time until 1992, I became design director and in 1994 I became creative director
"I ultimately became creative director of the Gucci group. I was doing about 16 collections a year. And I literally was burning out.
"It was incredibly hard to leave Gucci, for both me and my business partner. We were lucky enough because we were a public company, we took the company public to operate as though it was our company, and it was, and we delivered very well for the shareholders. We had complete autonomy, so I never thought I would leave Gucci.
"As a fashion designer I was free to create what was right, it was quite devastating.
"I had such a great voice in contemporary culture, and if you're someone who likes to express themselves that is very powerful and valuable, and I felt like I had no voice."
And the fashion mogul has revealed he was "happy" his departure from fashion would allow him to make movies.
He explained: "All of a sudden at aged 43, I decided to retire from fashion and I decided to start making movies, that part was happy, I opened this office and moved to Los Angeles more permanently. So, the idea of escaping fashion and making films was great, it was something I wanted to do for a long time - the making films part."
However, the 'Nocturnal Animals' filmmaker has revealed he wasn't "prepared" to go from having a super busy schedule being at the helm of the fashion industry to having a "blank" diary once he left, and felt he had "no identity".
He said: "I wasn't prepared for what it felt like when you had a crowded calendar and life and identity and that kind of is wiped away. And I had blank pages on my calendar and it took me much longer to find a film project that spoke to me, and in that time I was drinking a lot, which I had started previously. It was very very hard.
"I think anyone who has a career ... when that disappears you don't know who you are. I didn't. Who am I? What is my identity? I don't know who I was and who I was supposed to be. I had no identity. When you've worked so hard and all of a sudden you have nothing to do but play tennis and golf it was very strange."
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