Richard Buckley, fashion journalist and editor at a string of magazines including Vogue Hommes International – obituary

Richard Buckley, who has died aged 72, was an American fashion writer and one-time editor-in-chief of Vogue Hommes International; while he was known for discovering new talent and spotting emerging trends in menswear, he also liked to push boundaries with provocative fashion shoots depicting men in lipstick, cavorting with prostitutes or locked behind bars; and he was the long-time partner of the superstar fashion designer Tom Ford.

Buckley spent his early career in Paris working for John Fairchild’s Women’s Wear Daily, and claimed to have been the first American fashion journalist to write about John Galliano, “when he showed his collection in a fire exit at Olympia in 1985”. He also introduced Americans to the designer Leigh Bowery, the fashion label BodyMap and the New Romantics movement of the 1980s.

He once observed that the more men have felt free to express themselves, the less they seem to know about style. His rules of smart dressing included the advice that a man is judged by his watch and shoes: “Even if clothes are ill-fitting or old-fashioned,” he maintained, “a beautiful watch and a good pair of shoes imply a sense of taste and style.”

For the past 35 years Buckley had been the enigmatic figure by Tom Ford’s side at fashion events; in 2009 he appeared in Ford’s debut as a film director, A Single Man, starring Colin Firth and Julianne Moore. He first saw the Texan-born Ford, who was 13 years his junior, in 1986, at the New York show of a young designer called David Cameron.

“I noticed a guy standing in the crowd off to the side and thought, ‘Cute, definitely cute’,” he recalled. They met again a week and a half later and on their first date the 25-year-old junior designer earnestly told the older man that within 10 years he would be in control of a major European label. Buckley recalled thinking “Ah, sweet”, but by 1994 Ford was creative director of Gucci.

Buckley was tall and thin and stood ram-rod straight; friends and colleagues described his piercing blue eyes, though Ford saw them differently: “He has the wildest eyes, like an Alaskan husky,” he said. “They’re not blue, they’re not grey, they’re a colour you’ve never seen before. They approach silver.”

During a career lasting more than 40 years Buckley watched fashion not only evolve but also repeat itself, recalling how Fairchild, an inspired publisher and editor, had once told him: “Richard, you are nobody in this business unless you are copied.”

Rising to the theme, Buckley added: “Yves Saint Laurent is credited for introducing le smoking, a men’s tuxedo for women, in 1966. I have always thought Saint Laurent’s inspiration for le smoking came from Marlene Dietrich, who wore one in the 1930 film Morocco.”

Richard Buckley was born into a military family in Binghamton, New York, on October 13 1948. He spent his early years in France and Germany, where he was educated at the University of Maryland’s Munich campus.

In 1979 he joined New York magazine. “When I was young I was obsessed by fashion, and as a journalist I was always looking for what was new,” he told Document Journal in 2018. “If I was just starting out today, I am sure my head would be in the same place as that of most young people today.”

After three years he moved to Paris as European editor of Fairchild’s Daily News Record. “I would hear him on the phone with a select few New York designers, discreetly telling them the direction they should be taking based on the Paris shows,” he recalled of his publisher.

He became fashion editor at Women’s Wear Daily and was also involved in Fairchild’s W magazine and his shortlived Scene, aimed at younger readers.

In 1988 he joined Tina Brown at Variety in the US, becoming the title’s social editor. Two years later he moved to Milan, contributing to Mirabella and Italian Vogue, and later returned to Paris. After a spell as European editor of Condé Nast’s House and Garden he became editor-in-chief of Vogue Hommes International in 1999.

Buckley grew increasingly critical of the digital age, claiming that today’s fashion journalists lacked even a basic knowledge of how garments are made. “I get the impression that most journalists, Instagrammers and influencers don’t know organza from Eugene Ormandy or a godet from Jean Paul Gaultier,” he grumbled.

He and Ford had homes in London and New York, though latterly they lived in Santa Fe and in California, where Ford designed the house but Buckley allowed himself free rein in the rose garden, enlisting the help of a Santa Barbara rosarian who had helped Barbra Streisand and Oprah Winfrey.

In 2007 Buckley made a rare appearance in a gossip column, after turning up at Elton John and David Furnish’s White Tie & Tiara Ball in a suit made by someone other than his partner: “Actually, my suit’s not Tom Ford at all – it’s Moss Bros,” he told The Daily Telegraph’s Spy column. “But I’m hoping to get my Tom Ford in time for next year.”

The couple were married in 2014 and Ford survives him with their eight-year-old son Jack, who was born through a surrogate mother.

Richard Buckley, born October 13 1948, died September 19 2021