How Tommy Hilfiger’s Hong Kong connection helped build an American luxury fashion brand, which has worked with Usher, Britney Spears and Beyoncé and saw a star-studded showing at NYFW – interview
- The designer spoke to Style before his autumn/winter 2024 show at New York Fashion Week where guests included Sofia Richie Grainge, Indian actress Sonam Kapoor, Christopher Briney, Lucien Laviscount and Jon Batiste
- Hong Kong tycoon Silas Chou once owned the brand and Tommy Hilfiger is now part of PVH Corporation, a group that owns Calvin Klein
Tommy Hilfiger, the fashion label known for its unmistakable preppy vibe, may be as American as apple pie, but the brand was born in Hong Kong. So says founder Tommy Hilfiger himself in an interview on the day of his autumn/winter 2024 show during New York Fashion Week in February.
The 72-year-old designer reveals that he spent the months leading up to the founding of the brand – established in 1985 – in Hong Kong, which back then was a global hub for garment manufacturing.
“In 1984, the year before I started the brand, I went to Hong Kong on July 1 and I stayed at the Shangri-La Hotel in Kowloon,” he recalls. “I went to the factories and designed the entire collection by myself with a notebook and a pen. I drew everything myself and stayed there [until] they made it and put the prototypes in duffel bags. I came back to New York and went to Bloomingdale’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman, Macy’s and I sold them the collection.”
His connections to the city, however, have only deepened in the years since. In 1989, Hong Kong tycoon Silas Chou acquired the brand, propelling international expansion and turning it into a household name outside North America. Tommy Hilfiger is now part of PVH Corporation, an apparel group that also owns fellow American label Calvin Klein.
Clad in a varsity jacket, denim pants and white trainers of his own design, Hilfiger is the poster child for that kind of wholesome collegiate aesthetic that has made designers like him and Ralph Lauren the global ambassadors of American fashion.
Unlike other US fashion brands that have struggled to make it outside their country and to compete with the European brands that dominate the luxury industry, Hilfiger set out to expand globally very early on and is now a household name around the world.
“We started out as an American brand in menswear and then we added womenswear, childrenswear, accessories. We opened a store in the UK, which was very successful, and in Paris, Milan, Frankfurt, Hamburg and throughout Europe,” says the designer about his early foray into other markets. “We found that Europeans and Asians loved American brands. We continued to evolve the collections but keep the DNA, which is very American preppy, Ivy League, collegiate and classic American cool. We always wanted to keep that flavour. We never abandoned that, but we always changed the look and style according to the seasons and the trends of the moment.”
In the 90s, Tommy Hilfiger experienced huge growth in the US thanks to its embrace from the hip-hop community, with rappers and their fans lining up to get their hands on the baggy jeans, hoodies and baseball caps emblazoned with the now-iconic Tommy Hilfiger logo depicting a red, white and blue flag.