Tommy Hilfiger can best be described in his own words: “We’re about color, we’re about preppy, we’re about classic, we’re about America!”

Born middle class in Elmira, New York, Hilfiger co-established his first clothing store, People’s Place, while a high school senior. It was 1969. The shop was where a kid could find bell-bottom jeans, fringed vests, and granny dresses, and they flew off the shelves. By the mid-’70s, Hilfiger had grown the business to seven stores. But disco killed the hippie movement and a recession hit. In 1984, Hilfiger was working as a freelance designer in New York, and had just been offered a job at Calvin Klein, when an Indian textile heir put a proposition on the table: Under the Tommy Hilfiger name, he would finance a menswear label à la Ralph Lauren, but younger and less tradition-bound.

Hilfiger introduced his fresh take on the preppy look in 1985. Energetic and hyperbolic marketing campaigns would become a brand signature (some, over the years, have even argued that they were more creative than the clothes themselves). By the early ’90s, Hilfiger’s collections were evolving, incorporating the brighter palettes, blown-up logos, and loose, oversize forms synonymous with hip-hop style. Then Hilfiger did something few menswear designers had dared do before: use his success in that realm as a springboard for the womenswear runway. In 1996, he showed his first women’s collection. The New York Times was enthusiastic, cautioning other designers of all-American sportswear to watch their backs.

Once again, however, the tide turned. Critics began saying that Hilfiger was exploiting African-American consumers by pandering to stereotypes about the rap lifestyle. Spike Lee even parodied him as a money-hungry square in the film Bamboozled (“We keep it so real,” the screen designer boasted, “we give you the bullet holes!”). Meanwhile, the beleaguered designer’s private life started getting bad press, too, due to his split from his wife of 20 years, Susie.

But Hilfiger has withstood the trials of the millennium years. Today he is the stuff of all-American legend, having refocused on his founding concept, modernized classics. “It was difficult for me because I was searching for the answer for so long, and the answer was right in front of me,” he has said of his rebound. “Do what I do best.”

Tommy Hilfiger

Spring/Summer 2019 • Womenswear

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