P UBLICATIONS

By HILFIGER:

Books

Hilfiger, Tommy, with David A. Keeps, All-American: A Style Book, New York, 1997.

Hilfiger, Tommy, with Anthony DeCurtis, Rock Style: How Fashion Moves to Music, New York, 1999.

On HILFIGER:

Books

Mandle, Jay, "In a Word, Hilfiger: Fragrances, Film, Books on Fashion Titan's Runway," in Sora, Joseph, editor, Corporate Power in the United States, New York, 1998.

Le Dortz, Laurent, and Béatrice Debosscher, Stratégies des leaders américains de la mode: Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Liz Clairborne, Polo Ralph Lauren, et Tommy Hilfinger , Paris, 2000.

Articles

La Ferla, Ruth, "Hilfiger Re-Emerges," in the New York Times, 31July 1990.

Younger, Joseph D., "The Man Makes the Clothes," in Amtrak Express (Washington, D.C.), September/October 1993.

"Throwing Down the Trousers," in Newsweek, 11 July 1994.

Mather, John, "Tommy Hilfiger's Great Leap," in Esquire, August 1994.

Duffy, Martha, "H Stands for Hilfiger: The Former Menswear Laughingstock Expands into the Women's Market," in Time, 16 September 1996.

Brown, Ed, "The Street Likes Hilfiger's Style," in Fortune, 16 March 1998.

Dodd, Annmarie, "From Hip-Hop to the Top: Tommy Tells How He Pushes the Envelope," in Daily News Record, 2 November 1998.

Jenkins, Maureen, "Tommy Hilfiger Success Rooted in Music Tie-Ins, Multiple Niches," in Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News, 6 August 1999.

Lockwood, Lisa, "Crossing Over: Hilfiger Charts His Course in Women's Wear," in WWD, 13 September 1999.

Curran, Catherine, "Tommy's Swoon; Designer Lost Touch with Core Audience; Overexpansion Diluted Brand's Cachet," in Crain's New York Business, 4 September 2000.

Young, Vicki M., "Bloomingdale's to Drop Tommy Men's From Branches," in Daily News Record, 26 March 2001.

Fallon, James, "Hilfiger is Soaring in Europe; Designer's European Business is Over $100M," in Daily News Record, 30 March 2001.

***

In an article titled "Throwing Down the Trousers" ( Newsweek, 11 July 1994), Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger are rendered in a showdown over men's underwear, the former having long occupied Times Square billboard space with provocative underwear ads. Hilfiger, seen standing on Broadway and 44th Street with his boxer-clad male models, meekly states, "My image is all about good, clean fun. I think Calvin's image is about maybe something different." Hilfiger is smart. He juxtaposes his hunky models in flag-and-stripe-designed boxers at surfer jam length with the implied enemy in bawdy, black, sopping promiscuity. Hilfiger has been right—in design and business— in promising "good, clean fun" in an unabashed American style that has achieved phenomenal success. America has wanted a menswear mainstream, neither aristocratic nor licentious. Emerging first in the 1980s with a clever campaign announcing himself among established designers, he has come to fulfill his own declaration to become one of the leading names in American design, certainly in menswear.

Acknowledging "I'm both a designer and a businessman" in the September-October 1993 issue of Amtrak Express, Hilfiger divides his own successful role into its two components that he himself has rendered indivisible. Hilfiger has most certainly learned from American designers Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein that fashion is a synergy of business, aspiration, and classic design—with the image and craving constituting aspiration as perhaps the most important element. Hilfiger has shrewdly chosen a particular place for himself in American menswear imagery.

Whereas Lauren has preempted old-money WASP styles and Klein has successfully created a sexy vivacity, Hilfiger has come closer to Main Street, a colorful Americana that still waves flags, still loves button-down collars, that appreciates classics, and adores his "good, clean fun" along with family values. His customers may even abhor pretense or promiscuity, and may strive for collegiate looks but would never rebel too much—dressing a little more modestly and traditionally than those who prefer his designer-commerce confreres. His closest kinship (or competitor) in the market is David Chu's similarly brilliant work for Nautica, likewise reaching into the smalltown, cautious American sensibility for roots and imagination.

The "real people" effectiveness of Hilfiger is, of course, both real and illusory: he is stirring the deep-felt American conservative sensibilities of the late 20th century at the very time when culture is annulling any vestige of Our Town sentimentalities. The "feel good" ethos of Hilfiger's design is not image alone, for his intense commitment to value-for-price and quality materials confirms the joy in his design. His colorful, sporty, comfortable clothing appealed preeminently in the 1980s to the middle class in America. In 1988 Hilfiger said in his own advertising, "The clothes I design are relaxed, comfortable, somewhat traditional, affordable and…simple. They are the classic American clothes we've always worn, but I've reinterpreted them so that they fit more easily into the lives we live today." By the 1990s, Hilfiger was a clothing symbol of African American and Hispanic urban youth, engendering immense street-smart urban loyalty along with his classic Main Street constituency. Hilfiger's clothing is readily identified, with logos clearly visible on his ever-expanding clothing collections.

Hilfiger has associated himself with two other popular American images, both with special appeal to youth: sports teams and rock music. He has captured 30-something clients who are aging into their 40s, and yet Hilfiger is also building his young following. His great success has defied much élitist fashion skepticism. Ruth La Ferla, writing for the New York Times in July 1990, reported unforgivingly, "As a 'name' designer Mr. Hilfiger sprang full grown from the mind of his sponsor, Mohan Murjani, in the mid-1980s. Explicitly promoted as a successor to Perry Ellis or Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren, Mr. Hilfiger achieved a degree of fame, or notoriety. But the stunt never came off; Mr. Hilfiger's fashions and image did not gel."

Of course, American enterprise is full of "stunts," from P.T. Barnum to Henry Ford to Dr. Kellogg, all with origins in harmless chicanery and old-fashioned chutzpah. Despite detractors, Hilfiger has consistently created his own dynamic and vigorous vision. After Murjani's backing, Hilfiger took his business public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1992, a rare instance of a designer-name business trading with success.

Hilfiger's sensitivity to casualwear can be brought to the business side of the male wardrobe, especially as it is already inflected by casual and sports-influenced notes. In 1994 he added tailored clothing to his line, confident the men who had already associated him with comfort and clean-cut exuberance would carry those same ideals to a full-cut American suit or jacket for business. Part of his business acumen and pragmatism is expressed a statement to Joseph Younger that he wanted to dress men from head to toe before dressing women and children—which was exactly what he did (though many of his men's shirts, shorts, and trousers were worn by women and teens).

Hilfiger's business experienced ups and downs during the late 1990s and early 2000s, going from being Wall Street's fashion-industry darling for eight years (starting in 1992) to suffering lowered profits and stock prices in 2000. Many of the company's troubles were attributed to overexpansion, both in customer base and retail presence. During the late 1990s, Hilfiger entered several new business segments, including fragrance (Tommy, Tommy Girl, Freedom); a cosmetics line, Tommy Hilfiger Color; women's sportswear; a watch collection (licensed to Movado); a full line of women's swimwear (licensed to Jantzen), athletic apparel and shoes (licensed to Stride Rite), and the Hilfiger Home collection, which like the apparel, was influenced by the designer's preppy and patriotic sensibilities. This aggressive strategy led the brand to lose some of its cachet, especially in the eyes of its loyal consumers. Stores began to discount Hilfiger merchandise, and retailers were quoted in publications such as Crain's New York Business as saying its core designs were a season or two behind the trends.

Hilfiger's marketing direction in 1999—called the Year of Music— did not help matters. Sponsorship of tours by mainstream musicians such as the Rolling Stones and Britney Spears alienated the hip-hop youth who had been the company's loyal customers since 1994. Some of the designer's problems were beyond his control, however; email rumors circulated, suggesting Hilfiger was a racist (unfounded), which had ramifications on sales. All of this led the Tommy Hilfiger company to announce a loss in the quarter ending March 2000, the first ever since it went public eight years earlier. The design firm now found itself in the position of explaining to the financial community how it would turn itself around.

Although the company's retail operation grew quickly in the late 1990s, with 15,000-to 20,000-square-foot flagship stores opened in London, Mexico City, and Beverly Hills, many of these large stores were closed within a few years. Hilfiger refocused its retail strategy on smaller stores, such as a planned outlet in New York's SoHo neighborhood. In addition, the designer's expansion into womenswear did not meet expectations, and as of 2001, the company was in the midst of turning this segment around.

Other setbacks included Bloomingdale's decision, as part of a restructuring, to eliminate the Tommy men's brand from all its stores except the 59th Street New York flagship—women's and children's apparel were unaffected—and Hilfiger's failed attempt in 2000 to acquire rival Calvin Klein. One bright area of Hilfiger's business in the early 2000s, however, was Europe, launched through a license with Pepe Jeans London in 1997. The business began with men's sportswear and segued into other men's categories, as well as women's and children's apparel and licensed fragrances. Europe was Hilfiger's largest market outside North America, with products sold in upscale department stores such as House of Fraser, Harrods, Galeries Lafayette, El Corte Ingles, and Brown Thomas.

To get its domestic business back on track in 2001, Hilfiger concentrated on returning to what company executives (quoted in Crain's ) termed "traditional Tommy Hilfiger styling—classics with a twist." Hilfiger continues to oversee a youthful, purely American look with ties to music and pop culture; part of his fall 2001 collection was inspired by auto racing and featured sleek leather pieces. The challenge for Hilfiger now is to continue his appeal to a broad range of demographic groups yet not lose sight of the fashion-forward urban consumers who put him on the map.

—Richard Martin;

updated by Karen Raugust