Father ‘figer
Interview | Josh Sims As he prepares to celebrate 25 years in the business, design mogul Tommy Hilfiger plans to take his mass-appeal brand further upmarket TOMMY HILFIGER IS clearly no fan of Britney Spears. Of all the culture that America has exported, cheesy pop is among his least favourite. “America has offered the world [...]
Interview | Josh Sims
As he prepares to celebrate 25 years in the business, design mogul Tommy Hilfiger plans to take his mass-appeal brand further upmarket
TOMMY HILFIGER IS clearly no fan of Britney Spears. Of all the culture that America has exported, cheesy pop is among his least favourite.
“America has offered the world a lot of stupid stuff: McDonalds, Dunkin’ Donuts, Britney,” he smiles. “But then, even with the resentment towards America as a result of
political blunders, the country still has a lot to offer in terms of its heritage. American culture rings a bell because it’s so immersed in pop culture, rock ’n’ roll and Hollywood.
I travel all over the world and the lifestyles I see are pretty Americanised to some extent; people are drinking Coke, using Apple computers, watching Disney…”
alt="The Moscow store and a catwalk design from the Hilfiger autumn/ winter collection">
And wearing Tommy Hilfiger, he might add. Earlier this year, he published a book called American Icons, a pictorial homage to all things from the USA. And Hilfiger is not
remotely apologetic about this. After all, he founded a formidable business empire on pure Americana. In 2006, competition from the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana
Republic and European designer diffusion lines brought declining US sales and encouraged Hilfiger to relinquish his shareholding to private equity company Apax Partners,
he was still able to sell his brand for a cool $1.6 billion, about $17 per share at the time. But this is little wonder: the company, which next year celebrates its
quarter-century, had made $25 million annual sales within its first five years. That is all the more a remarkable achievement, given that his classic clothes are far from
remarkable themselves: a vanilla uniform of updated preppy classics. Think chinos, button-down shirts and denim, sportswear for men, women and children. They’re all
uncomplicated and wearable, to which might be added equally uncomplicated bed linen, eyewear, jewellery and assorted bathroom paraphernalia. Besides, declining sales
can be temporary. A European stock market flotation is now under consideration, once the current financial gloom has lifted. Last March the company reported record
results, with total group net sales up 14% to $1,964 million. This period has seen the opening of 140 new stores, taking the global portfolio to 796, with more in the pipeline,
including a four-floor, 22,000 sq ft flagship store on New York’s Fifth Avenue – following on from ones in London, Paris, Milan and Moscow. This month sees the UK launch
of premium male fragrance, Hilfiger for Men. It is a clear statement of intent: the Hilfiger bounce-back is in full effect, part of a move to take the brand more upmarket and to
bring brand perception in the US more in line with that in Europe. To this end, the erstwhile head of the European operation, Fred Gehring, has been made chief executive of
the whole company, leaving Hilfiger as principal designer and numero uno tastemaker. It has also entailed this year’s programme of buying back of licenses, such as those
for the entire Japanese market, and for footwear throughout Europe. “Every business has setbacks along the way,” Hilfiger says. “I’ve been bankrupt and run out of money
more than once.” Yet, perhaps more than any other
designer – more than the Euro-minimalism of Calvin Klein and the self-consciously English sensibility of Ralph Lauren – Hilfiger is the quintessentially American one. Even
his beginnings, as a businessman rather than a designer, are the stuff of the American Dream. Born the second of nine children in Elmira, New York, by 1969, he was
travelling to New York City to buy bell-bottom jeans, which he customised and sold to a local Elmira store. Soon he opened his own store, The People’s Place, and was
selling jeans alongside beads and incense. He was 18.
alt="The brand launches its Hilfiger for Men fragrance this month">
After seven years of importing big-city style to the sticks and opening 10 stores of his own, the local trade evaporated and he went bankrupt. As far as public
recognition was concerned, that could have been the end of Thomas Jacob Hilfiger. He was offered design positions at Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis but, determined to be his
own boss again, turned them down. In 1984 he launched the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation, which now has some 8,000 employees.
alt="The Tommy Hilfiger campaigns are all based on the American dream">
He kept the same hands-on approach though. Earlier this year the New York Times reported that Hilfiger, now 57, had been spotted in a department store of his home town
trying on each pair of his company’s jeans for comfort. He has not lost sight of the small details, but how come the big picture is so successful? Timing was on Hilfiger’s
side. “It was a moment when men began to put away their ties, dress more casually, first at the weekend and then through the week,” he says. “It
came out of Silicon Valley and was the idea that workers would be more productive the more comfortable they were. But I think that’s what American designers can lay
claim to: the ‘casualisation’ of dress, that idea of being free of the confinement that some clothes can bring.” Perhaps more than this, it is the fact Hilfiger has been an
attentive marketer right from the start. He was conscious, for example, not to call his brand ‘Thomas Hilfiger’, lest it sound too aloof, and, worried that nobody would be able
to grasp ‘Hilfiger’ on its own.
When urban, notably black fashion, developed its own take on preppy in the early 1990s, Hilfiger was the first brand giant to tap into it, with super-baggy sizes
and colourful, logo-centric clothing that would become ubiquitous on the backs of skateboarders, surfers, rappers the likes of Snoop Dogg and subsequently, most of
mainstream youth culture.
Hilfiger has also been careful to export the American classic style into markets where its retains a degree of cool. Some two-thirds of Hilfiger’s business is outside the US,
with European sales up 22.8% over the past year to $1,036 million and many of the stores having undergone a glossier refurbishment programme this year. But Tommy
Hilfiger is less the last word in progressive design and more the first in lifestyle branding. After all, Hilfiger himself has no formal fashion training, but he realised early on that
the likes of Pierre Cardin and Yves Saint Laurent – both design geniuses but also the pioneers of fashion licensing – provided workable business models.
“A lifestyle brand is more than just things to wear,” Hilfiger explains. “It’s a feeling, an attitude that somehow affects the emotion – consumers want to immerse
themselves in what the brand does, to be a ‘Ralph Lauren person’ for instance. Companies over here are especially good at building lifestyle brands – the more successful
we are, the more creative we have to be to maintain that success. Maybe that creative drive is the product of capitalism.” It is the kind of statement that few fashion
designers would make, all too often fearful of besmirching their image. But Thomas Hilfiger’s bank balance is healthy enough for him to speak as he finds. And few thoughts
could be more American. www.tommy.com
