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Sitting pride of place above the mantel in Dee and Tommy Hilfiger’s living room is Picasso’s Mousquetaire aux Oiseaux II. Its inky brushstrokes contrast the surrounding ceiling-to-floor creams, making for a sublime and striking vignette. “Oh, that’s our DJ,” Tommy casually remarks as we stroll past the 1972 masterpiece. I look closer. The painted figure does appear to be mixing on a turntable. Take note: humor and refinement go hand in hand in the Hilfiger household.
On a recent afternoon in Palm Beach, I arrive at Coral House (their residence along South Ocean Boulevard) as Dee and Tommy are settling back in after a trip to Los Angeles. A quintessential Florida downpour drenched the landscape the evening before, and the hedges and palm trees that envelop the nearly three-acre property are exploding with greenery. The Mediterranean-style home was built by the prolific architect John L. Volk in 1970 and occupies a plum position in town.
“This is what really attracted us to the house when we first came to look at it,” Tommy tells me from the center of the living room. “We stood here and looked at the ocean one way, and the lake in the other.” Just a handful of homes extend from the Atlantic Ocean to Lake Worth, Coral House being among them. Despite the coveted views, it was their most challenging home renovation to date, requiring three years of meticulous work to restore the mansion to its original glory.
This was far from Dee and Tommy’s first rodeo, though. The two are intimately familiar with the rigorous demands of home transformations. It’s a journey that has carried them around the world, and across numerous properties, over the course of their nearly 17-year marriage—all of which is masterfully chronicled in the new book release, Hilfiger Homes (Vendome Press). “We’ve never bought a house—ever—and just said, ‘Right, let’s move in,’” Tommy explains. “It’s always a redo. But that’s also the fun of it.”
The pages of Hilfiger Homes are armchair travel at its most imaginative. A Caribbean idyll on the secluded island of Mustique, a Normandy-style manor tucked within Connecticut parkland, a handsome yacht off the coast of Saint-Tropez, and their Palm Beach enclave: a temple to timelessness, clad in breathtaking coral stone (hence the name).
But despite the grandeur and singularity of all seven residences featured in the book, one unifying motif is threaded throughout: family. This sentiment is affirmed in the book’s foreword by Anna Wintour. “There’s always a sense that these homes are not show palaces,” she writes, “but places where Tommy and his wife, Dee, and their kids actually enjoy living their lives.” (Together, they share a blended family of seven children.)
As we stroll around Coral House, Dee drives home this point. “Every room I walk into, I love. We really live in this house,” she says as we arrive at her favorite nook—a coat closet that’s been converted into a sumptuous display for her robust collection of tableware. “Kris Jenner had one, and I thought it was such a fabulous idea—it’s like a jewel box,” Dee says. Just across the hallway lies another of her favorite areas—a light-filled dining room designed in the spirit of Capri, with a Flora Danica set magnificently arranged on shelves. “I think we’ve used them once, but I’m so paranoid about breaking a plate,” Dee says. Adds Tommy, with a laugh: “Yeah, they’re not for eating.”
But prestigious Danish porcelain aside, the two insist that nothing else in the home goes unused. Like the Coral Bar (formerly an office) with its coral-toned, lacquered surfaces and bamboo trim. “Whenever we have guests over, they usually head straight for here,” Tommy says. He’s standing beside a towering wicker giraffe—which, to my surprise and delight, opens at the belly to reveal hidden bar storage. Playful touches like these are peppered throughout Hilfiger Homes, in the glossy photographs by Douglas Friedman, words by veteran journalist James Reginato, and dozens of personal family snaps.
Take their residence at The Plaza as an example of these amusing touches. When Dee, Tommy, and interior designer Cindy Rinfret were renovating a duplex penthouse overlooking Central Park, a fantastical domed turret became the chosen site for a family portrait. Rinfret suggested acquiring drawings by Hilary Knight (the illustrator behind Eloise). Tommy took it a step further and called up Knight to implore the octogenarian artist to paint a mural covering the turret that would feature depictions of the Hilfiger family at play in the park. Knight agreed. “I sat here for a month while he painted,” Rinfret recalls in the book.
There’s also the nearly ceiling-to-floor aquarium in their son Sebastian’s aquatic-themed bedroom. Or the life-size Standing Security Guard sculpture by Marc Sijan in their Austin Powers-inspired Miami home that is so lifelike guests often stopped to ask him where the bathroom was. When we step into Tommy’s office in Coral House, I spot a large hippo on the shelf. “My dad’s nickname was hippo, so we all became hippos,” he says with a smile. So it seems, there is always a signature touch.
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“This book is really personal and comes from years of imagining and dreaming,” Dee says over a lunch of scallop carpaccio and steamed flounder. “It was a journey,” Tommy adds. “We’re very hands-on, very opinionated, and we know what we want and don’t want.” Over the years, the couple have amassed a coterie of interior and landscaping legends to work on these projects with, from Martyn Lawrence Bullard and Rinfret to Miranda Brooks. “It’s really interesting to imagine what a home can be and then execute it,” Tommy says. “And during the execution process you make changes and adjustments you wouldn’t normally make, or you wouldn’t think you would make in the beginning, and it ends up improving everything.”
In addition to a milestone book release, this year also marks the 40th anniversary of the Tommy Hilfiger label. “It feels like… I don’t know,” he says, after a pause. “Sometimes it feels like we’ve been doing this for five or 10 years, other times it feels like forever. I think back on some of the fashion shows like, ‘Oh, that was 20 years ago, but it seems like it was yesterday.’ I look at photos from some of the collections, and I can remember right down to the soles of the shoes.”
And this decades-long commitment to a creative vision, held by both Dee and Tommy, has perhaps never been more visible than in these iconic properties—which they and their family have called home throughout it all.
Hilfiger Homes is available from September 16, 2025.
