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Born in 1951, Tommy Hilfiger made his first foray into fashion as a purveyor of hippy chic to New York campus kids in 1969.
Building
on the success of his first shop, People's Place, Hilfiger had
established a chain of 10 speciality stores in upstate New York by the
age of 26. During the Seventies, he turned to designing and for a
period worked for Jordache before launching his own label in 1985. An
astute businessman with a talent for publicity, Hilfiger's first ad
campaign, which cost him $3 million (Ł1.8m), prompted a flurry of
interest, after it proclaimed him as one of the "Four Great American
Designers for Men", along with Perry Ellis, Calvin Klein and Ralph
Lauren. By 1990, sales of Tommy Hilfiger clothes had topped $25 million
(Ł15m).
Until the early Nineties, Hilfiger's market profile was
similar to that for Calvin Klein: predominantly middle-class,
middle-aged, mid-American white males. However, after his designs were
picked up by young Afro-Americans, gangsta rapper Snoop Doggy Dog
appeared wearing a Tommy Hilfiger shirt on the premier US TV show
Saturday Night Live in 1994 and his sales rocketed overnight. The
implications were not lost on Hilfiger. He quickly began to design
baggier, more casual clothes to meet the new demand for the emergent
streetwear styles. In 1995, Hilfiger was named Menswear Designer of the
Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
Today the
growing Hilfiger fashion empire, supplemented by fragrances and other
merchandising spin-offs, is worth more than $400 million (Ł240m) a
year. Meanwhile Hilfiger is known to spend much of his spare time
including his 50th birthday in March 2001 - and money on the Caribbean
island of Mustique.
In July 2000, he announced that he had
"mutually and amicably" separated from his wife of 20 years, Susie. The
two have four children together. |
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