Dedicated Avatar of Fashion

It was impossible to miss the buzz around town last week when the new Tommy Hilfiger flagship store opened in Grafton Street. At a time when there is major concern about a decline in retail sales, on the countdown to Christmas it is exactly the kind of fillip that the city centre needs.

The new store, which cost €4 million to renovate, is based on the site of the old Grafton Arcade, opposite Brown Thomas. An impressive 446 square metres in size, it will carry a wide range of men’s, women’s and children’s fashions, as well as accessories like bags, belts, footwear and watches.
It might be the twelfth Hilfiger store to open in Ireland, but it’s actually the first opening that Tommy has personally attended. In fact, a large contingent arrived in Ireland from both the US and Hilfiger’s European headquarters in Amsterdam. Clearly, it’s a big deal for the man and his global fashion empire...
“We’d been looking for a location for quite a while,” the 57-year-old New York resident reveals. “We thought that – in good times and bad – having a great location will do nothing but good for the brand. You need great locations. I’ve been in business long enough to know that if you don’t have a great location, you don’t do the amount of business you really want to do. Simple as that.
“We’re also looking at the global recession from a different point of view than other designers,” he adds, “because a lot of designers have very high priced clothes. Ours are great quality, great design, but at affordable prices. That’s a big difference. I think that during a time like this, our positioning is advantageous.”
When it comes to fashion, Hilfiger believes that Europe and America have more in common than people might realise.
“I don’t see a big difference in taste,” he says. “Some of the European desires are different, sure, because they’ll pay a little bit more and they want maybe a slightly different quality, but it’s not a tremendous difference.”
Hilfiger insists that his brand’s popularity here is based on the fact that the styling is built to last.
“The more classic brands now – like mine – will have more sustain,” he proffers. “At a time like this, as a consumer, you don’t want to invest in something so fashionable that next month it’ll be out of style. You want to buy something that you can wear for
years to come.”

Hilfiger was in a nostalgic frame of mind when we met. He’d been partying the night before, but this was the morning of the opening of his Grafton Street store and he was up bright and early. The mogul has always been a big music fan. It’s a subject that clearly excites him.
“In the very beginning, when I started in business – even before I started the Tommy Hilfiger brand – I was inspired by music, by rock ‘n’ roll. I was in high school in the ‘60s and my favourite bands were The Doors, The Stones, The Beatles, The Who, Hendrix. I used to look at their album covers and want to be like them.
“So, I had long hair, bellbottoms, cool clothes – and all of my friends wanted to look like me. My school mates would say, ‘Where did you get those clothes? Where did you get those jeans?’ So I brought them from New York City to my hometown, five hours away, and sold them to my friends.”
This wheeling and dealing eventually encouraged Hilfiger to open his own small clothing store in 1969, called People’s Place.
“We eventually had a few of them on college campuses,” he adds. At the time, Hilfiger also decided to put record stands into his stores, mixing music and fashion. “All of the rock groups would come and get their clothes from me. And I sponsored their concerts and I sold tickets for rock festivals. So music was a big part of what I was doing. I was sort of a headquarters for music fashion. The revolution of rock music at the time was so inspiring – it drove me. It was such a passion of mine.”
Had he ever considered becoming a musician?
“You know what? I think you have to have talent to become a musician, and I didn’t have that. My son and my brother are musicians – so it runs in the family. My son’s actually in Hollywood right now in a studio, recording. So, he’s very excited. My daughter is an artist as well. She had a show on MTV. But somehow I didn’t get that gift – but I am grateful that I have a talent for design, because growing up I didn’t know what I wanted to do. They didn’t teach fashion in my high school (laughs). And I never went to college.”
Hilfiger says that the eventual failure of his People’s Place chain was the catalyst that motivated him to focus completely on developing his own brand of clothing.
“I learnt a lesson when I was 23 years old,” he reflects. “I went bankrupt. My stores went what we call Chapter 11. And what happens is – if you can’t pay your bills, you file for bankruptcy. Anyway, I wasn’t watching my business because I thought I could just expand it and expand it. And then, all of a sudden, I didn’t have the money to keep going. But I owed money.
“The big lesson I learned was that if you’re going to be in business you can be creator and have the artistic skills but you really need the commercial sensibility as well. So, I taught myself about accounting, about balance sheets and how to create cash flow and profits, and about issues with tax. All of that.”
It was an expensive lesson but a vital one. After he’d been forced into bankruptcy, Hilfiger was headhunted by many of the leading US designers. It was a difficult decision to reject the lure of a steady income, particularly since he was flat broke, but Tommy had a vision. He was determined to become a leading designer in his own right.
“I thought I could create clothes that would be more interesting than the clothes I was buying from manufacturers. And I did! And my customers responded very well. So, then I thought, ‘OK, well I should now offer them to the world!’ Problem was I didn’t have any money. I started with $150 and 20 pairs of jeans. It was hand to mouth. It was day-to-day living. But you have to go through that if you want to be successful. I’ve always taken risks and I’ve always pushed the envelope a bit.”

At the age of 33, in 1984, he founded the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation. And the rest, as they say, is multi-million dollar fashion history. Fast forward to 2006, Hilfiger sold off his company for an estimated €1.4 billion to a private investment company called Apex Partners, with Hilfiger remaining on in charge of the Tommy Hilfiger brand. How did it feel to have that type of money lodged into your account?
“I wish it had all gone to me!” he laughs. “But of course it didn’t because over the years I’ve had many different partners, financial groups and banking partners. It was a great feeling to reach that level of success – but the truth is I’m never really satisfied. I always want to do something more and to improve what we’re already doing. So, it’s not like I’ve made it! I believe we have a lot of work to do still.”
The huge success of the company notwithstanding, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for Hilfiger. In 2000, the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation was one of 20 companies embroiled in a controversy over ‘sweat shop’ work practices at manufacturing plants in Saipan. Reflecting on the storm today, it’s clear that Hilfiger is still annoyed about what happened. He’s adamant that he didn’t and wouldn’t ever tolerate or endorse any form of unethical work practices.
“Everyone who was manufacturing in Saipan found these factories that acted improperly,” he explains. “We lost a lot of money. We walked away. We said, ‘We’re not manufacturing with you!’ And we’d already promised the shipments to stores, but we just walked away.
“We’re always concerned about this. We have a team of people who are our ‘police’ basically, and we randomly check on the manufacturers now, to make sure that everything is alright. We would certainly never indulge in those practises. And we have walked away from many situations...”
Following another widely publicised controversy, Hilfiger appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2007 to dispel a bizarre internet rumour that had germinated some ten years previously. Where the story – that Hilfiger had been slated to appear on the Oprah TV show back in 1997 only to be ejected from the studio after allegedly saying that he wished certain ethnic minorities would refrain from wearing his brand – originated from has been impossible to establish. It was a complete fabrication, but the rumour mill went into overdrive nonetheless, prompting Oprah to release a statement that she hadn’t even met Hilfiger, never mind having him on the show!
“That was just stupid,” he observes. “The racial rumour upset me greatly because it was so palpably untrue. In the long run, Oprah invited me on the show to dispel it because she said, ‘I’ve heard this rumour – come on my show. That’s all garbage!’ I think that any public figure is going to have rumours that circulate about them, but this one was just ridiculous.
“But, you know,” he adds, “some people believe that racial rumour. Other people believe that I’m gay, I’m straight, I’m rich, I’m poor, I’m 50, I’m 40, I’m 30, I’m 20, I’ve had plastic surgery, I’m 6ft 9ins. I mean, there’s all sorts of different things out there, so many of which are false. So, you just have to go with the flow. People are going to make up whatever they want to make up.”

Hilfiger’s interest in music remains strong. He talks with impressive authority about the Rolling Stones, and his meetings with Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, among others. Tommy TV is a current pet project, bringing the association of the brand with music to a more sophisticated level than ever before. And he’s also co-author, with the music writer Anthony DeCurtis, of the book Rock Style, a wonderfully lavish and brilliantly produced coffee table tome.
“It basically portrays the beginnings of rock style and how it influenced fashion all the way through the years of rock, punk, soul, glam, and what it did to the world of style,” he enthuses. “Rock music really had a tremendous influence. If you look today at the way the musicians are dressing, you’ll see that a lot of the very successful musicians are style icons as well. I became a student of it myself and wanted to share my thoughts and ideas with the public, so I produced this book.
“I’ll tell you what,” he adds, reaching across the coffee table for another book, “I’ll show you a picture of my very first shop. This is People’s Place and this is what it was all about. This is 1969...”
With his long mane and boyish looks, it’s easy to see the young Hilfiger as someone who had basked in the hedonistic rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. He laughs at the recollection.
“I was living like a rock star for many years in New York, LA, London and Paris,” he acknowledges. “I had to be responsible for my business, and that was the first priority, but there were times when I was just immersed in, you know, hanging out with rock stars in Studio 54 and Tramps in London. And I was absorbing a lot of what was going on around me. I was absorbing what they were wearing, where the music was going, everything.”
Hilfiger had a very rock ‘n’ roll moment back in 2006 when he squared up to Axl Rose in a New York club. According to the tabloid reports, Tommy had to be persuaded by his own security to leave the club after an altercation with the Guns N’ Roses singer. What was that all about?
“He was being obnoxious. I was with Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz and a bunch of friends. And he was getting pushy and rude and I asked him to, ‘Please be a gentleman!’ Then he wanted to hit me! So, he started to pull back his arm with a big ring and I thought, ‘If he hits me I’m going to be dead! I better hit him first!’ So, I lurched over and hit him first. That was a bit of excitement in the club that night!”
In terms of rock ‘n’ roll experiences, it was one for the annals!
“Yeah, it was. It really was.”