Summer Brand Highlight: Tommy Hilfiger

Summer is here and in full swing! With one of the best track records for weather since we can’t remember when, this British summer has certainly given us something to smile about. Our summer wardrobes are getting their money’s worth of exposure this year and we couldn’t be happier!

This beautiful weather has got us thinking about some of our favourite summer vintage clothing designers, and one of these is Tommy Hilfiger. We adore our vintage Tommy Hilfiger range and the brand (and the man) has an interesting history that we want to share with you…

Who was he?
Tommy Hilfiger was born on March 24, 1951 in New York. He was the second of nine children in a working class Irish-American family. Hilfiger’s talent wasn’t immediately recognised when he was growing up - he wasn’t an athlete, in fact he was so small, he had to sneak 15-pound weights in his pockets to get on the football team and he suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia, making school very tough for him. 

Although not excelling in school, his entrepreneurial gifts were very evident from a young age. As a teen he started buying jeans in New York that he remade and sold for a markup in Elmra and when he was just 18, he opened a store called ‘The People’s Place’ and sold hippie style clothing and products.

The brand
Hilfiger built his brand, using his signature red, white and blue tag which has become popular among the upper class and the casual buyer. Despite his entrepreneurial spirit, it wasn't until 1984 when he was approached to design a men's sportswear line with his name on it that his life of fame and fashion began

Love life
In 1976, Hilfiger fell in love with one of his shop employees, Susie Carona. They married and moved to Manhattan after Hilfiger declared bankruptcy in 1976. Not long after, they paired up and became a husband and wife design team and were employed by Jordache (although were fired just a year after!). After this was when he was finally approached for his own label

Business success
It was Indian entrepreneur Mohan Muriani who took Hilfiger on after looking for a designer to head a men’s sportswear line. The partnership was announced with a huge marketing campaign that included a massive billboard in Times Square announcing him as being the next big thing in American fashion… He even said so himself in 1986 ‘I think i am the next great American designer. The next Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein’. The tactics used for this campaign were bold and he even got into a big shouting match with the billboard’s creator in the middle of a restaurant. Well, you know what they say - all PR is good PR and this actually helped the brand and his line of preppy clothing became hugely popular. 

In the early 1990s, it wasn’t just those after the preppy look who went opted to buy Hilfiger’s clothes but oversized versions of the clothes became popular in the hip-hop world too. Rap stars and celebs such as Snoop Dogg, helped to promote the brand to those in all walks of life. Snoop Dogg’s appearance in a giant Tommy Hilfiger t-shirt during a Saturday night Live performance in 1994 took sales figures to an all-time high. 

Hilfiger’s commercial success was huge but the fashion elites still snubbed him and when he was coming first in the Council of Fashion Designers of America Menswear Designer of the year, the board decided to not give the prize at all. However, in 1995 they did relent and gave it to him. 

Difficult times
In 2000, Tommy Hilfiger split with his wife of 20 years who had had 4 children with. At the same time, his professional fortunes crumbled too as his clothes fell off in popularity among the hip-hop set, and sales plunged by 75%. The brand just wasn’t considered cool anymore and Hilfiger put this down to the fact that "The large logos and the big red, white and blue theme became ubiquitous. It got to the point where the urban kids didn't want to wear it and the preppy kids didn't want to wear it”. 

Bringing back the brand
As a result of this, he reworked the brand and in 2007, he signed an exclusive deal with Macy’s to sell Tommy Hilfiger’s best-selling lines at their stores only. After this, he married his second wife, Dee Ocleppo and in May 2010, he sold his once again successful company for $3 billion to Phillips-Van Heusen. Following his good streak, he received the Council of Fashion Designers of America's Geoffrey Beane Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Today, Hilfiger continues to be the principal designer of his brand, and there are more than 1,400 of his stores in 90 countries. In 2016, he took his "classic American cool" looks in a new direction and  partnered with Runway of Dreams to create a line of adaptive clothing for children with disabilities