TOM FORD, the outgoing creative director of Gucci, the luxury goods conglomerate, is forging ahead with a new career as a film director after signing a deal with a talent agency.

Mr Ford has joined the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in California, it emerged yesterday, although he is not due to leave Gucci until April 30 after failing to agree the terms of his new contract.

Domenico De Sole, chief executive and Mr Ford’s close ally, will also leave the Italian firm at the end of April. The pair were responsible for resurrecting the Gucci brand, which was close to collapse when Signor De Sole, a former tax lawyer, took the helm in 1994. Last year Gucci’s sales were worth $2.5 billion (£1.3 billion).

CAA will now act as Mr Ford’s “agent for directing assignments”, it was reported yesterday.

Although Gucci refused to comment on the report, Mr Ford has made no secret of his film ambitions, despite boasting a cameo appearance in Zoolander, the fashion comedy, as his main cinematic experience.

Directing a film is the ultimate design project, Mr Ford told Vogue. “You don’t just get to design what people wear, but you design the whole world and whether characters get to live or die. There is a permanence to film that fashion lacks,” he said.

Pinault-Printemps-Redoute (PPR), Gucci’s parent company, announced this week that it would split Mr Ford’s job and sign up separate creative directors for the Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent labels that the company also owns.

Vittorio Radice, head of homewares at Marks & Spencer, is thought to have been considered for Signor De Sole’s job but analysts believe that Giacomo Santucci, managing director of the Gucci division, is likely to land the job.

Mr Ford and Signor De Sole were regarded as a retail dream team, wresting back control of Gucci’s worldwide licensing agreements and building a network of fully owned stories in key cities. In their hands sales soared from $200 million a year in the early 1990s to $2.5 billion.

PPR, which owns almost 70 per cent of the Gucci Group, will launch a $85.52 per share tender offer for the remaining shares in the group on April 1, bringing to a close a two-year takeover operation.

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