To Milan to meet its errant king, a man who once straddled this town like an ancient colossus — only more dashing, pithy and Botoxed. If Tom Ford, the 47-year-old fashion designer, didn’t exist, Aaron Spelling would have had to invent him. Soap-star handsome and impossibly demanding, he appeared to spend his 10 years as the creative head of Gucci, during which time he took the company from near-bankruptcy to almost £2 billion in annual turnover, sweeping into boardrooms and shouting: “I’m thinking satin, I’m thinking slashed to the crotch, I’m thinking. . . who the f*** ordered these danish pastries? You know I don’t do carbs on non-leap years. Fire them! Fire them all!”

I had met Ford a couple of times in the past at various fashion dos and, essentially, this was the vibe he gave off. He prided himself on being sexy and controlling — and even played up to the image. He used to arch his eyebrows a lot; now, though, he’s either afraid of the wrinkles or physically can’t (the Botox).

At a party he hosted one fashion week, he greeted me in his low American growl with the line: “There are hookers by the pool and coke in the bathrooms — enjoy!” (Neither of these things turned out to be true, the big tease.)

Then, in 2004, he left Gucci Group, where he had also designed the collections for Yves Saint Laurent and had overseen the acquisitions of Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen and Bottega Veneta. He was, unquestionably, the most powerful creative mind in fashion, but after a tussle over contract negotiations, he left and set up shop on his own. He started with menswear and eyewear, and this month added another women’s fragrance to his line.

When I first heard his new scent was called White Patchouli, I thought: “Oh, no, it’s going to stink like a batty old drama teacher with lipstick on her teeth.” Thankfully, it’s much cleaner-smelling than that, with a helpful coriander top note to balance out the thick patchouli fug, though there’s still a nod to 1970s decadence. Erykah Badu is the face of White Patchouli, looking like Diana Ross circa Studio 54, a club where Ford hung out as a student. It was easy to get in, he says, when you were 17 and cute, and could befriend Andy Warhol.

Thirty years on, he remains preternaturally young. On a Sunday morning in the reception of his Milan HQ, he darts in looking partied out, crying: “Be with you in a minute.” He disappears off somewhere to wolf down breakfast, then reappears in his office, chugging a caffeine drink from a can. His voice is ploughing new depths of gruffness. “Those should be white, not pink,” he drawls, pointing to some peonies on his desk. Are you difficult to work for, I ask? “I don’t think I’m a megalomaniac,” he says, smiling, “though you’d have to ask the people who work with me. Either we click or they don’t last very long.”

Ford, of course, is a perfectionist. This causes him no small amount of pain. “What I do is man-made. Things deteriorate, so achieving perfection is momentary, and that can be very unrewarding,” he says, putting on a “nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen” face. He deals with this by engaging in savage levels of workaholism. A typical week sees him in London, New York and Los Angeles; a typical month includes trips to Moscow, Zurich, Shanghai and São Paolo as well. “It helps that I have houses in a lot of these places,” he says. One imagines so.

After three decades of dizzying glamour, something in Ford has changed. I nearly spit out my designer water when he tells me he’s taken to slobbing on the sofa watching reality television and eating crisps. Did you get tired of being so dashing? “Well, a lot of people would say I was never charming in the first place,” he says. “I try to be nice, I try to respect other people, but over the years I’ve learnt that all this stuff we do is a bunch of crap. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its place. We are living in a material world, so why not live with something beautiful? But, ultimately, those things are not important. They are just a luxury for those of us who can afford them. When I was young, I really thought that if I had this sort of house, this sort of life, I’d be happy.

Then I realised I was just as happy when I was living in a two-room apartment in New York as a student — maybe that was more fun, actually.”

There’s a whiff of midlife crisis about this, but Ford is serious: “After Gucci, I thought I was never going to work in fashion again. I was a little burnt-out. It was also a somewhat traumatic experience, as we’d been there for 14 years and really built the company. Now I’ve recharged my batteries, I see that it taught me everything I need to know to do this. This is my life for the next 30 years: Tom Ford.”

Ford’s menswear makes Calvin Klein look like Burton. Coats come with shaved beaver linings and he has an unforgiving penchant for crocodile-skin shoes. Prices romp into the tens of thousands of pounds. Is this the right moment for superluxe? “The best things come from a need for something, and I couldn’t find any clothes to wear,” he says. I take a moment, trying (and failing) to imagine Ford standing in his packed walk-in wardrobe, tearing his hair in frustration.

“The 1990s were all about minimalism,” he continues. “All the architecture was pared down, everything was empty, and clothing was that way, too. Fragrances became watery and bottles were transparent. Now there’s a rediscovery of things that are more complex. I’m much more baroque in my tastes.”

Previously, his taste was for sex, sex and more sex. Ford was born in Austin, Texas, in 1961, the son of well-to-do estate agents (or “realtors”). At 17, he decamped to New York, where he divided his time between studying architecture at Parsons and acting, starring in dozens of television adverts (he won’t say which ones). He discovered sex — and men — at Studio 54, and, after a career change to fashion, when he was promoted up the ranks at Gucci, he thrust his pumped-up nymphomaniac aesthetic on an unsuspecting world. The Gucci woman was a spike-heeled, red-lipped, low-hipstered carnivore.

He maintains it was the right look for the time, but “I’m not going to keep repeating myself, I do what I want now”. And never mind who gets in your way? He laughs. “You can’t run around screaming hell, being an asshole in this business.” Really? “I really don’t. Do I throw tantrums? Yes. But more with Richard [Buckley, his boyfriend] at home if he’s forgotten to buy milk.”

Mellower now, and approaching 50, Ford says he no longer enjoys intimidating people the way he used to. “But people still react to me in a certain way.” he says. “I see them looking at me nervously at a dinner party, sitting there trembling, but then I’ll go over and someone will say, ‘Oh, you’re really nice. I wasn’t expecting that.’ ” Neither was I.