The recent report of Tom Ford demanding that nobody attend meetings with him if they are wearing colored socks has been met with a review of his latest endeavors by the UK paper The Independent.

They include his role as artistic director of the upcoming Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair for which he demanded that the actresses he photographed pose in the nude. Among the nude spreads, according to the paper, “there will reportedly also be sexy shots of George Clooney in a pool and the Jarhead actor Peter Sarsgaard suspended from the rafters in some kind of S&M fantasy.”

Sounds par for the course after his latest spread in W magazine. So it’s also not surprising that his quest to build a mansion on the outskirts of his native Santa Fe has been met with resistance by the Santa Fe Historic Review Design Board, one of whom described the estate as “a Wal-Mart perched on a hill.” That’s gotta hurt.

The crux of it all: “There has always been a thin line between seeming to go bonkers and generating free publicity.”

Eccentrics are amusing, so let them play. Ford has already designed his own coffin, they say, for an on-site mausoleum for him and his family. And no doubt it has its own dress code.