Tommy Hilfiger

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Tommy Hilfiger (2010)

Thomas "Tommy" Jacob Hilfiger (born March 24, 1951 in Elmira , New York ) is an American fashion designer .

Hilfiger's logo is inspired by his monogram in the flag alphabet . He ensured the revival of the college style that was popular in the 1970s and, with his jackets and shirts in vintage style, is considered a pioneer of All-American style (classic, neat, straightforward).

Life

Hilfiger grew up as the second oldest of nine children in a Swiss - German - Irish-born Catholic family in Elmira, a small town near Cornell University . His father was a watchmaker, his mother a nurse. His mother's family has Irish-Scottish roots, his father has German-Swiss ancestors who immigrated to the USA in the 1920s. Hilfiger attended Elmira Free Academy High School . His parents wanted him to be an engineer. However, in 1969, at the age of 18, Hilfiger decided to go into trade and not pursue another school career. He bought jeans and bell-bottoms in New York , which he changed according to his ideas and then resold in Elmira.

Together with two friends and $ 150 each in start-up capital, he opened the People's Place boutique in Elmira, his birthplace. The shop developed into a meeting point for the young people of Elmira. After seven years, People's Place had to close due to the changes in shopping habits caused by the emergence of large shopping centers.

Hilfiger now concentrated more on designing clothes and moved to New York with his then wife Susie Hilfiger. Despite being bankrupt, he turned down offers as design assistant to Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis . In the early 1980s, Hilfiger met Mohan Murjani, who owned the Gloria Vanderbilt Jeans license . This supported Hilfiger's business, but later also became insolvent. With the help of friends, Hilfiger managed to buy back the company. In 1985 he founded the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation and first brought out clothing under the brand name Tommy Hilfiger .

The Hilfiger brand had sales of $ 25 million as early as 1990 and went public a year later. In 1995, Hilfiger was named Menswear Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (German designer of the year for men's fashion ).

In 2005, Tommy Hilfiger sold his company to investment firm Apax Partners for $ 1.6 billion . In 2008 he received the Bambi in the fashion category . Hilfiger is currently the company's director (since 1992), honorary chairman of the board of directors (since 1994) and chief designer. In March 2010, the US fashion group was taken over by Phillips-Van Heusen for the equivalent of 2.2 billion euros.

Hilfiger has been married to Dee Ocleppo, a former model, since December 12, 2008. You have a son, Sebastian Thomas. From his first marriage to Susie Hilfiger, Hilfiger has four more children, Alexandria, Richard, Elizabeth and Kathleen.

criticism

In 1986, Hilfiger paid $ 8 million into a fund after his company, along with brands like Gap and Ralph Lauren , apparently participated in the exploitation of 13,000 seamstresses, mostly from China , in the 1980s . They were taken to the South Sea island of Saipan (Saipan is part of the US Commonwealth Territory) with the promise of an improvement in their living conditions , but there they had to work under inhumane conditions.

Trivia

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tommy Hilfiger. In: VOGUE .COM. Condé Nast Digital Germany GmbH , accessed July 10, 2010 .
  2. ^ Fashion Week New York: Tommy Hilfiger. In: Strawberry Lounge. Erdbeerlounge GmbH, March 1, 2010, accessed on March 31, 2010 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Tommy Hilfiger Biography. (No longer available online.) In: InfoMat.com. InfoMat Inc., January 18, 2007, archived from the original on July 26, 2010 ; accessed on July 31, 2010 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.infomat.com
  4. ↑ I am proud of my Swiss roots , Blick, October 10, 2015
  5. ↑ a b c d Klaus Boldt: The Champion. In: manager magazin online. manager magazin Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, May 29, 2007, accessed on July 10, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Interview with Dirk van Versendaal, in: Stern Mode, Spring / Summer 2015, p. 8.
  7. ^ Past Winners. Council of Fashion Designers of America Inc. , accessed March 13, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Apax buys Hilfiger for $ 1.6 billion. (No longer available online.) In: Handelsblatt Online. Handelsblatt GmbH, December 23, 2005, archived from the original on April 3, 2015 ; accessed on March 13, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.handelsblatt.com
  9. ↑ Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein in one hand. (No longer available online.) In: tagesschau .de. Norddeutscher Rundfunk, March 15, 2010, archived from the original on March 18, 2010 ; accessed on March 13, 2015 .
  10. ↑ 13,000 Asian women work for starvation wages and under the worst conditions. In: Tagesspiegel Online. Verlag Der Tagesspiegel GmbH, September 24, 1999, accessed on July 10, 2010 .
  11. ↑ Klaus Werner-Lobo / Hans Weiss : Black Book Brand Companies . Franz Deuticke Verlagsgesellschaft, Vienna / Frankfurt am Main 2001.
personal data
SURNAME Hilfiger, Tommy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hilfiger, Thomas Jacob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American fashion designer
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1951
PLACE OF BIRTH Elmira , New York , USA