Editor’s Note: “In Vogue: The 90s” (available from 13 September on Hulu and Disney+) explores the decade that was so transformative that fashion can’t, and won’t, forget it.” Digging deep into the research the producers surfaced lots of material from the Vogue Archive. Here’s one such gem: “Hip, Hot Hilfiger,” by Jonathan Van Meter, which originally appeared in the November 1996 issue of Vogue. Photographed by Harry Benson. Fashion Editor, Camilla Nickerson. Grooming by Lynn Campbell.
With the Statue of Liberty shrinking behind it, the biggest Tommy Hilfiger logo that anyone has ever seen is billowing in the wind in New York Harbor. It is one of those weird, rainy evenings in June when the cloud cover seems to turn everything a muted shade of yellow-green as if you’re wearing sunglasses, but you’re not. The logo is emblazoned on the mainsail of the Renegade Tommy, a 70-foot yacht that Hilfiger is sponsoring in an upcoming race. Tommy Hilfiger himself is aboard the Principia, a 93-foot motor yacht sailing alongside the Renegade, celebrating the launch of his new eyewear collection with about 50 members of the fashion press and eyewear industry. For a split second, from a certain angle, it almost looks as if the Lady of the Harbor herself is wearing a gigantic raincoat with a gigantic Tommy Hilfiger logo.
The very next day, I’m sitting beside Hilfiger in what he calls an “adoption” meeting, an all-day affair during which his design team presents its work to him, as well as a roomful of merchandisers, production people, manufacturers, and licensees from all over the world. They are deciding which designs to produce and sell to the masses for fall ’97. Hilfiger has in hand a tiny little rubberized version of the same logo that threatened to obscure the most famous view in Manhattan the day before, the logo that seems to be everywhere, growing bigger all the time: on sailboats, bike messengers, race cars, preppy college students: in every magazine; in every other rap video. As two women talk the assembled employees through the proposed designs. Hilfiger, bored, plays with the logo, sticking it on his cell phone one minute, squeezing it between his fingers the next. He leans over and whispers to me, “It’s a matter of giving people variations of what we know they want, as opposed to giving them what we think they want.”
Suddenly, one of the men sitting at the head table complains of repetition. “But I think there’s another problem,” says Hilfiger. “The use of the same Hilfiger athletics logo over and over again creates a perception that there’s repetition. In actuality there’s a lot of variation in fabrics. But maybe we should do some changes on the logo. I’d like to be the first to get off the trend, and I think we should just reduce them. Then pick our spots for the big ones. And the big ones should be really big and special. But we shouldn’t do it on every single thing.”
“It’s tough to know when and how fast to turn the faucet off on this,” says Michael Sondag, VP of design and licensing. “Because I know your customers and the buyers are going to want more of the heavier logos.”
“Even if we take a hit,” says Hilfiger, “I’d rather be at the beginning of this trend and maybe lose some immediate sales to come out really clean and get way ahead. I don’t want to get caught in a rut, and I don’t want to get caught in a downward spiral of a trend backing up on us.” Tiny logo in hand, he goes up to the presentation board and peels a big logo off one of the shirts, only to find another big logo underneath it. Everyone laughs. “Is there going to be a surprise under here?” he says as he moves on to the next shirt. He peels off the logo and sticks the tiny rubber logo on the blank shirt. “Look at this!” he says with a big, toothy grin. “This looks so great, doesn’t it? It looks very clean. The guy who wants tons of big logos has it already. He bought it from us. Or he’ll buy it from somebody else.”
Before the meeting is over, Tommy Hilfiger definitively orders companywide downsizing of all logos.
Such are the decisions of the man who has become the king of mass-market sportswear as street fashion, a throne long occupied by Ralph Lauren. Seemingly overnight. Tommy Hilfiger’s graphic logos and multi-culti, red, white, and blue aesthetic have saturated the cities and suburbs of America, and received the stamp of approval from that most desirable of customers: trendy, MTV-age kids. There are many other, more conservative consumers who have helped turn this into a $500 million company, but it is the kids and their love of the big logo and the status they believe it confers who have become Hilfiger’s most cost-effective billboards and bus shelters. And while Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, and Dolce Gabbana have inched their way into favor with the hip-hop audience with their cheaper DKNY, CK, and D&G lines, the Hilfiger logo still reigns supreme on the street.
To fully comprehend the riskiness of Hilfiger’s decision to shrink the logos, one must understand the ways of street fashion. When a rapper like Snoop Doggy Dogg decides that Tommy Hilfiger—with its blaring logos—is the bomb, and wears a piece of it on Saturday Night Live, as he did in the spring of 1994, millions of fans decide it’s the bomb as well. Right from the beginning in the late seventies, hip-hop has been obsessed with logos, mixing athletic gear (Puma, Adidas, Nike) with luxury status symbols (Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and MCM). “We always bought into logos,” says Russell Simmons, founder of Def Jam records and one of the architects of hip-hop, who now has his own fashion label, Phat Fashions. “The reason for it is that it represents all the shit we don’t have. We’re not ripped-dungarees-rock ’n’ roll-alternative-culture people. We want to buy into the shit we see on television, but we want to put our own twist on it. Part of the fantasy of fashion is about being successful. It’s aspirational. I put this on, I’m gettin’ laid. Not because I’m cool and raggedy but because I’m cool and clean. Because I want to buy into this culture.”
As street fashion cycles from the city to suburbia, something strange happens: Once the urban, black audience buys into a status symbol of the American dream, the white, suburban kids then buy it and wear it for exactly the opposite reason—to be alternative, to be counterculture, to be cool and raggedy.
Somewhere in the mid-eighties, Polo became the just-out-of-reach image of wealth and success in America to the sweaty masses, and the hip-hop community ate it up. Rappers started incorporating the word Polo into their rhymes, and there was even a gang called LoLifes in Brooklyn, Lo being short for Polo. Whether conscious or not, there was something ironic about the stance: the oppressed wearing the clothing of the oppressor. Street fashion has always been about the repurposing of someone else’s style, but Ralph Lauren’s image machine churned out ads that were so relentlessly Waspy and to-the-manor-born for so long that even the average white person could have felt alienated. Eventually, the very existence of hip-hop itself started to teach young black kids about marketing and business savvy and gave them an injection of self-esteem, so the idea of buying into something that doesn’t include you began to wear thin.
Enter Tommy Hilfiger with his younger, fresher, more graphic update of preppy sportswear—some would say a direct rip-off of Ralph Lauren. “He lucked out in a way,” says a stylist who has worked with a lot of rappers. “Hip-hop kids got smarter, and there was sort of a backlash against Ralph Lauren.”
“Polo and some of the other companies have gotten big boosts from the hip-hop audience but never really catered to it or understood it,” says Simmons. “Tommy, instead of just exploiting the hip-hop community, has also figured out why they like what he does. He’s bought into it, and his designers are hip enough to appreciate it.”
Simmons says that Hilfiger was one of his main inspirations to get into the clothing business in the first place. “Tommy’s success reaffirms for me what I’m trying to get done. I can call Calvin and get him on the phone and he’ll be nice to me, and I can do the same with a lot of other designers, but Tommy will make a phone call to a jeans designer and tell him, ‘You should make clothes for Russell even if he only wants 30,000 pairs, because he’s gonna one day want 300,000 pairs and you’re gonna like him. You better be nice to him today.’ I’ve never seen a guy so open and supportive of a company that would be, under other circumstances, his competitor. I like to see his clothes next to my clothes because they sort of loan each other some kind of credibility.”
That is, of course, the essence of street fashion: classic and modern mixed together, one lending credibility to the other. The trick for a modern sportswear company like Tommy Hilfiger is to create something alternative while giving up nothing. On the other hand, preppy is about classic and forever. Hilfiger must walk that fine line between classic and modern without losing either audience.
“We both make golf sweaters, that’s for sure,” says Simmons with a laugh. “Next year I got some pink golf sweaters and shit, and you can’t sell that stuff in Southampton it’s so corny. And I say, ‘Yeah, right. I’m gonna sell that in the ghetto.’ My pink golf sweater with an RWS crest is the most obnoxious thing you’ve seen in the world. But when you wear it with khakis, cut right, and you wear shell-toes, the shit is right. Tommy understands that. He understands where it fits in. And that’s different from everybody else who does what he does. It’s an amazing company with a lot of sensitivity for a lot of different people.”
A tour through company headquarters—spread over several floors of two buildings in midtown Manhattan—provides ample proof. There are seemingly hundreds of young people of every stripe working on one of the many Tommy Hilfiger lines, from jeans and athletic wear to underwear and golf clothing, tailored menswear and his new women’s collection. The maze of offices is endless, with racks of clothing, piles of fabric, and inspiration boards everywhere, plus the occasional blaring, thumping boombox serving as a reminder that this is not your typical fashion house. At one point on my guided tour—during which Hilfiger says hello to and knows the name of every person we pass (his company employs about 1,000)—we come across a young Latino kid wearing overalls and a big, fat gold rope chain around his neck with the name JASON encrusted in rhinestones hanging from the end of it. “Jason!” Hilfiger says with obvious affection. “Where’s your teeth? Go put your teeth in.” Jason disappears into an office and reappears smiling a mouthful of gold teeth. Hilfiger puts his arm around his shoulder and beams like a proud father. As we round another corner, Hilfiger pops his head into an office that looks like a teenager’s bedroom; it is filled to the rafters with the junk and detritus of a young and trendy boy’s life. “This is Ubi’s room,” Hilfiger says. “He’s a snowboarder, he’s a surfer, he’s a partyer. This guy is sooo great. He’s got so many incredible ideas, so we just let him go.”
Eventually we make our way to the more serene offices of both Hilfiger and his younger brother Andy. Tommy’s office—with David Bowie artwork and Christopher Makos photographs on the walls, a collection of guitars and vintage sports equipment, and basketballs signed by Michael Jordan and Grant Hill looks like the bedroom of a once young and trendy boy who is now wealthy beyond his dreams. “I never sit at my desk,” he says. A trip across the hall to Andy’s office (he is 34, Tommy is 44) reveals more rock paraphernalia: Bruce Springsteen’s jacket (bought at an auction), Mick Jagger’s vests (a gift), Pete Townshend’s stage outfits, designed by Tommy (Hilfiger sponsored Townshend’s tour a few years back). A fanaticism about music runs in the family: Andy and brother Billy both play in the family rock band. Hippo, while Tommy occasionally jams with them.
Andy, like his older brother, is wide-eyed and friendly to the extreme; at times their openness can be disconcerting and can make them seem naive. And then you realize: They’re just really nice guys. Andy’s official job is head of public relations for Tommy Jeans, but he functions as Tommy’s secret weapon—befriending and soliciting musical artists and celebrities who might want to dress in Tommy Hilfiger and giving them free clothes. Andy knows people in the music business from his days working as a production assistant on music videos. His other claim to credibility with the hip-hop crowd is that he once lived in uptown Manhattan near Harlem. “I started seeing a lot of Tommy stuff around,” he says, “and the young kids would come up and say, ‘Hey, they’re talking about your brother in these songs.’ I’d say, ‘Wow, really? Which songs?’ And they’d show me. It started around ’92 with rapper Grand Puba: ‘Hilfiger on top/Girbaud on the bottom/Polo on the back.’ So I’d call some of the groups and invite ’em up.” Around the same time, Tommy and Andy were at JFK airport on their way back from Hong Kong when they saw a group of young black guys turned out in Hilfiger outerwear. They approached them, and it turned out to be Grand Puba’s group. “Invite ’em up!” became a marketing strategy that has clearly been effective.
A year ago Andy hired Kidada Jones, Quincy Jones’s daughter, as in-house stylist for Tommy Jeans, giving her free rein in dressing celebrities (including Michael Jackson in Vibe magazine) and giving the company even more street cred with the hip-hop crowd. Now they dress TLC, Coolio, and the Fugees, among many other groups. The exposure these artists give the Hilfiger logo is worth a gold mine, a fact not lost on some of them. Lauryn Hill, the Fugees’ female singer, declined to be interviewed for this piece for fear that the group would appear to be endorsing Hilfiger, a step beyond simply taking free clothes. Coolio is also careful to clarify his relationship with the company. “They don’t embrace the hip-hop community,” he says, “they use the hip-hop community. They know if we’re out there wearing the clothes, we sell millions for them. I don’t have a contract like Michael Jordan does with Nike, or like models do with designers.”
Hip-hop, like fashion, is a fickle business, and some contend that Hilfiger has built his company on the ever-shifting sands of the street’s obsession with logo wear—that the success can’t last. Which is perhaps why there seems to be another Tommy Hilfiger launch every week: the New Tommy fragrance, the eyewear collection, and now the young, frisky women’s collection. As fashion reporter Amy Spindler pointed out in The New York Times recently, he is the first designer to work his way “backward to the top,” securing the foundation before creating the fantasy.
Back onboard the Principia, wearing seersucker and sipping white wine, Hilfiger says that with the women’s collection, he is aiming for that ever-elusive balance of commercial viability and creative acceptance that all designers crave. “Do you feel pressured to be creatively accepted by the fashion community?” I ask him.
“I think I’ve positioned myself in a way that gives me an advantage,” he says in a voice so soft I sometimes have to strain to hear him. "”In the sense that I don’t think people expect me to be John Galliano. So if I give them better than expected, I think they’ll be satisfied. If I come out with a beautiful collection that all the editors love and it doesn’t sell, that would be a greater disappointment than if I come out with a collection that all the editors say, ‘It’s OK, it’s salable, it’s nice, I’ve seen it before,’ but it sells like crazy.”
Hilfiger is also quick to point out that while his street fashion has gotten all the attention (VH1 honored him with its Catwalk to Sidewalk award in 1995), it’s his less-expensive-than-Polo men’s classics that the Wall Street bankers and average Joe love and that keep the company shares the number-one fashion stock traded on the New York Stock Exchange.
At a recent benefit in Manhattan for the Fresh Air Fund, Tommy Hilfiger, chairman of the event, stood onstage in a white linen suit, white bucks, and a red, white, and blue tie in front of a giant American flag giving a quick speech that looked and sounded like a stop on the campaign trail. With his carefully groomed image and slightly patronizing tone, Hilfiger can seem at times like a politician-running for the office of president of American sportswear. Perhaps it is the fact that he goes on multi-city tours in his private jet to meet and listen to his customers. Or maybe it’s his camera-ready image: One day, packed into an elevator crowded with fashion editors, I got a closer than usual view of his face and realized that he was wearing makeup (to be fair, he may have just come from Good Morning America, where he has a regular gig); another time, he bummed a cigarette from me and worried that I would write about it.
Hilfiger—raised in Elmira, New York, in an Irish Catholic family with nine kids—is, after all, an all-American success story. Neither a good student nor an athlete, he had entrepreneurial instincts that took hold early: He opened his first shop in Elmira—People’s Place—when he was still in high school. He de- signed his first line under the name Jacob Alan (his middle name is Jacob; his partner’s name was Alan) and sold it in his stores, which by 1975 had grown to a chain of seven. In 1976, having spent too much time partying in New York, “waking up in strange places,” and not minding the store, he filed for bankruptcy and went out of business. After nine years of fighting his way back, in 1985 he launched the company that has grown to international proportions, getting married and having four children along the way. “I did everything,” he says to me over drinks at the St. Regis hotel, speaking of his wilder, younger days, when he had long hair, wore velvet bell-bottom suits, and hung out at Max’s Kansas City. It was the failure, he says, that returned him to his roots, to the classic preppy clothes that he wears now with nary a hair nor detail out of place. I ask Hilfiger about the crack Ralph Lauren made recently in New York magazine that he had “stolen my clothes.”
“I think I’m probably more similar to Ralph than any other designer, because I stick to the classics and love the preppy looks,” says Hilfiger. “But I try hard not to do the same things. I don’t want to be known as an emulator of Ralph Lauren or even one who builds his business on the philosophy of Ralph Lauren. I want to do it my way.” He pauses and leans back in his chair.
Did the comment bother him?
“It didn’t bother me at all. If I were Ralph I would feel the same way. I would feel that this young kid ... or person ... has really encroached upon my territory. However, he would never have done rock ’n’ roll clothing. He never would have given the nod to the hip-hop community and gone out of his way to dress the bands as I have.”
One afternoon, I sit in on an advertising meeting with some of the architects of the Tommy Hilfiger image. Advertising great Michael Toth and his team, and Hilfiger’s creative director, Reed Krakoff, are going over a new fall jeanswear campaign shot by photographer Dewey Nicks. Hilfiger is behind schedule. As we wait, I ask Toth if it is a challenge to differentiate Hilfiger from other sportswear companies. “Five or six years ago when we met Tommy,” he says, “I saw this one picture of him with his shirttail out, and nobody was doing that kind of stuff. That was the beginning of the brand DNA—we uncovered the essence of what Tommy is. At that time, all our clients would say, ‘You have to aspire’ because this was when Ralph Lauren was knocking ’em dead doing this rich thing. They would say, ‘We have to do a campaign that stands for something everybody wants to do. They want to be rich.’ Or do what Calvin Klein’s doing—’They want to get laid.’ And all they thought about was the sensuousness of Calvin, the wealth of Polo. What we did was position Tommy as somebody who really is aspiring to be happy. People were ready to see a guy smiling in an ad—which was like a no-no at the time-doing something that felt real and honest. People aspire to happiness because everybody wants to be happy, and that’s what Tommy projects. It’s not something we invented. The suit fit.”
When I suggest that Tommy Hilfiger’s casually multiethnic ads seem to have inspired other companies to use the same, including Ralph Lauren’s contracting the black supermodel and hip- hop icon Tyson Beckford to be the most prominent image for Polo Sport, Toth says, “When we’re doing our work we never say, ‘OK, cue the black kid!’ There’s a lot of true camaraderie that we don’t have to fake. I think a lot of that comes through in the images that we’ve put together. I think Ralph is jealous. He’s searching for that young customer Tommy owns.” He cites the recent launch of the Polo Jeans Co. as proof.
Eventually, Hilfiger comes into the room, apologizing for being late. The team spreads out two versions of the same campaign on the table for him to look at. One is a group of young people playing a game of tackle football. The other version is the same exact thing except that the models are covered with mud—clothes and all—from head to toe. “I like the mud campaign,” says Hilfiger, and everyone nods in agreement. “It’s young and fun and full of energy, but I think there’s going to be an issue with showing the clothes.” It reminds him of something, and finally someone says Woodstock II—the images of all the kids dancing in the mud. “That’s exactly what it is!” he says. “Slam dancing! This is a campaign unto itself.” He spreads all the mud pictures out on the floor and looks thoughtfully at them for a minute. “This is fun, though, isn’t it? Nobody has ever done this.” This clearly makes him happy, and he looks up and smiles mischievously. “Something Ralph definitely wouldn’t do and some of the other competitors wouldn’t even consider, which is what I like about it.”