‘I don’t need big fat guys in my shop,’ says Tom Ford

The American fashion designer and film director Tom Ford does not want fat men spoiling the look of his fabulously elegant suits, according to a report in the new Vanity Fair magazine by Ingrid Sischy, picked up with glee by the New York gossip pages.

The object of Ford's derision was the Italian-born entrepreneur Jean - or Johnny - Pigozzi, who stands at 6ft 4in, takes a size XXL and is known for wearing the sort of loud shirts which require the rest of us to wear dark glasses.

Pigozzi told Sischy, one-time editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, of a conversation he had with Ford having visited the designer's boutique on Madison Avenue.

"Tom, I went to your shop, I couldn't buy a handkerchief," he recalled saying to the great man.

To which Ford apparently replied: "You know why? I don't want big fat guys like you in my shop."

Pigozzi, 58, told Sischy that Ford was making a big mistake because "big guys like me have the money."

Which brings us to the inconvenient truth behind the anecdote. Pigozzi is launching his own range of men's clothes called Limoland - all sizes catered for - and needs all the publicity he can get for his store way across town from Madison Avenue in the West Village. ·