Tom Ford, the designer who in the 1990s rewrote the fashion industry rule book by turning the dusty Italian house of Gucci into the first global superbrand and a byword for sex-appeal, made a surprise return to the fashion frontline in New York on Sunday evening.

The nature of his comeback is sending shockwaves through New York fashion week and beyond. In an industry obsessed with blanket coverage, global reach and instant accessibility for the maximum number of customers, Ford went instead for exclusivity, intimacy and intrigue. He invited only 100 people to the show, which was held in his Madison Avenue menswear store instead of the Lincoln Centre, where the rest of fashion week is based.

He persuaded Beyoncé and Julianne Moore to model and narrated the show himself. But the move that has raised the most eyebrows was the decision to ban all photography apart from pictures taken by his in-house photographer, the controversial Terry Richardson. Richardson's photographs of the event will not be released until 2011, when the clothes go on sale. Until then, no one beyond those present will know what the clothes look like.

To have Beyoncé model in your show when only 100 people get to see the image sets a new standard for the meaning of power in the fashion industry. By pulling off this coup, Ford has infused his new line with the very highest cachet. But more significant for the fashion industry is the fact that Ford, returning to women's fashion after several years, is questioning the entire value system of maximum exposure round which it is currently built. Ford is a lifelong provocateur (this is the man who art-directed the infamous YSL advertisements of a naked Sophie Dahl, back arched and eyes closed, which caused a tabloid outcry), but he is also an extremely astute businessman. When he left Gucci in 2004, he did so with a personal fortune of $200m (£130m), having managed his stock options cleverly as the company rose.

The first Tom Ford womenswear show does not appear on any schedules for New York fashion week, and no embossed invitations were sent out. Instead, each guest received a phone call asking them to come to the store at 6.30pm on Sunday. There, they were met by a phalanx of handsome greeters in Tom Ford dinner suits, holding oversized black umbrellas as the succession of yellow taxis and town cars pulled up on Madison Avenue. Inside, gilded bamboo chairs were packed tightly beneath huge vases of orchids, and waiters proffered very strong, very cold vodka and tonic.

The rumour mill had been working overtime with stories of celebrity models slated to appear. When Bart Freundlich, the film director husband of Julianne Moore, took a seat with their eight-year-old daughter, Liv, on his lap, followed by Solange Knowles, sister of Beyoncé, who settled into a front row seat next to Ford's longterm partner, Richard Buckley, some of the more outlandish rumours began to seem probable. As the lights dimmed, Ford took up a position at the end of the runway, his business partner, Domenico de Sole, standing discreetly in an alcove behind, and told the audience: "I am very proud to show you some wonderful clothes – I think – worn by some of the world's most inspirational women."

The 32 models included Beyoncé, Moore, Lauren Hutton, Hollywood producer Rita Wilson and artist Rachel Feinstein Ford, impeccably dressed in a black tuxedo and black silk knit tie, provided a suave, tongue-in-cheek commentary. "Ladies and gentleman, Miss Joan Smalls ..." he said, introducing one of the catwalk's current stars, "... who I think just turned me straight."

Later, when Beyoncé, dressed in a black fishnet cocktail sheath embroidered with audaciously sparse gold and silver sequins, turned with a wink to show off her famous back view to the audience, Ford added: "And now, I'm definitely straight."

"The whole event was a series of incredibly luxurious gestures," said Sally Singer, who recently left American Vogue to edit T, the style magazine of the New York Times. "It was a deliberate decision to restrict access to an experience. The mood he created in that room was about how women want to feel in their clothes. He is catering to a very luxurious customer, and that customer will love the idea that the clothes were shown on the most powerful beauties in the world, and only in front of the most powerful critics. It's a reaction against the mass and rabble that the industry has become."

Carine Roitfeld, the editor of French Vogue, whose daughter, Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, appeared in the show, called it "amazing, chic and very, very funny. Just like Tom".

Ford's decision to use a range of models and non-models, women of different ages and body shapes, struck a chord with both audience and models. "These are the women who would really buy and wear the clothes, and they look fabulous in them," Singer said. "They are beautiful, but they are also beloved women – women who have a history and who have meaning to us." It was the older, more voluptuous women, such as Wilson and Feinstein, for whom the audience whooped the loudest. "The atmosphere backstage was just incredible," said Manchester-born, one-time supermodel-turned-musician Karen Elson. "It felt like we were representing all the real, sexy women out there who love great clothes. We each felt like we looked the best we were ever going to look. We were in heaven."

The clothes seemed to distil the various lives of Tom Ford into one tightly edited collection. The black leather biker jacket worn by Julia Restoin-Roitfeld and the leopard-print trouser suit on Amber Valletta recalled the sharp, sexy tailoring of his early Gucci collections. The suede trenchcoat and silk smoking all-in-one worn by Lou Doillon evoked the classic Parisian smoulder of YSL.

Classic vintage-inspired eveningwear, including a fringed, floorlength, degrade dress on Moore and a blood-orange, shredded-tulle opera jacket on Feinstein, hinted at the Hollywood world in which Ford has most recently been immersed as the director of the award-winning film A Single Man. The emphasis on absolute luxury – the women wore earrings of feathers dipped in 18-carat gold, and carried hand-painted python clutch bags with clasps of precious stones – suggests that Tom Ford womenswear will have similar price tags to the notoriously expensive Tom Ford menswear.

"That was so much fun!" said Beyoncé after the show, as models and audience mingled and all around the great ice queens of the fashion industry broke into rare smiles, and accepted glasses of champagne. "Good," said Ford, cool and collected among the hubbub. "I think fashion should be fun."