“Have you ever seen the body?” Tom Ford, the designer, said by telephone from London, referring to a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped physique that might represent the universal standard for male models. He was talking about Justin Timberlake.

The Timberlake who took to the airwaves over the last two weeks to promote his latest musical effort, an album, “The 20/20 Experience” — his first in six years — and a single titled “Suit & Tie,” and who also cranked ratings to a 14-month high on “Saturday Night Live,” is in certain ways a Ford creation, right down to the modified pompadour.

“I happen to like the hair straighter,” said Mr. Ford — Pygmalion to Mr. Timberlake’s male Galatea.

Long gone and perhaps best forgotten is the boy-band alumnus with frosted curls and cornrows, the man who turned up for photo sessions in gray pleather jump suits and who once wore a stonewashed bell-bottom denim get-up to an awards show, with matching hat and armpiece, his girlfriend at the time, Britney Spears. The idea of a former Mouseketeer toying with sartorial reinvention is nothing new. Christina Aguilera did it. So did Ryan Gosling, and, of course, Ms. Spears.

But few performers have undergone such a complete makeover: teenage heartthrob in a knit cap and kicks transformed into a new Cary Grant. Beginning in 2011, Mr. Ford began playing paper dolls with the singer and actor, dressing him for the Oscars, the Grammys, the Brit Awards, the SAG Awards, the annual gala of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and his $6.5 million wedding in Italy last year to the actress Jessica Biel.