Tom Ford is releasing a watch made entirely from plastic salvaged from the ocean.
The 59-year-old designer decided to take a stand against the global single-use plastic crisis, and each of his luxury watches removes the equivalent of 35 bottles of plastic waste from the sea.
“As far as I know, it’s the first luxury timepiece made from ocean plastic. It’s inventive and I’m really proud of it,” Ford told Vogue. "I suppose it feels like plastic, if you know. But it doesn’t feel like a compromise. It’s incredibly durable. It’s beautifully made."
He wanted a timepiece that would still fit in with his luxury brand, and said that his approach to creating long-lasting fashion made him an ethical designer.
"The thing about what I do: it’s not disposable. We’re producing products that are meant to last – products that if you manage to keep your figure you can wear your entire life, or give to someone else, your daughter, your son... I think that’s the most ethical thing about what I do," Ford added.
As well as the recycled plastic watch, the designer also announced he has teamed up with actor Adrian Grenier's organisation Lonely Whale to launch the Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Prize, which will award $1 million to the innovator who invents an eco-friendly replacement for thin-film plastic, also known as polybags or polythene.
A winner will be announced in 2022, and the product will be on the market by 2025, and Ford is keen to find a solution to prevent the current pollution levels of the popular single-use plastic, which stands at around five trillion per year.
“It has to be scalable, a real actual solution that can be manufactured and produced, that’s a big part of it,” Ford says. “It’s been an education process for me, but I’m so excited about finding an alternative to a polybag."
