Tommy Hilfiger and Karl Lagerfeld are joining forces. Deirdre McQuillan meets Hilfiger in Amsterdam to find out what's in store
This year, global US brand Tommy Hilfiger celebrates its 20th birthday, and its eponymous founder his 54th. We meet in Amsterdam, the company's European headquarters, where the anniversary party is taking place. The showroom is situated right in the heart of old Amsterdam in an impressive listed building on the Rokin, formerly owned by Sotheby's auction house. The place has been decked out, Tommy-style, for the occasion with a mixture of the winter collections, vintage pieces from the 1980s, an electric guitar assemblage, Warhol prints, and pictures of Hilfiger with various celebrities. One high-ceilinged room is dominated by a stuffed male giraffe. Previous decor statements have included Porsche cars and speedboats, I am told. It's a cheeky, confident and very American display in a venerable, old-world European setting. Very apt, very deliberate.
With its familiar red, white and blue flag motif, the Hilfiger clothing empire has become one of the great US urban streetwear success stories; in l999 the year of the opening of its first European store in London, the corporation was turning over $1.5 billion a year, and Hilfiger's personal wealth was estimated at around $100 million.
Married, with four children, Hilfiger has a personal staff of 12, lives in a mansion in Connecticut, maintains a house in Mustique and spends summers in Nantucket. His eldest child, Ally is a producer and co-star of the MTV reality show Rich Girls. At our meeting, his personal bodyguard, an African American, sits in the entrance hall of the showroom, awaiting instruction.
In the US, the brand has strong links with the music industry and popular culture. Its founder was once described as the quasi-official couturier to the hip-hop generation. When the rapper Snoop Doggy Dog wore a Hilfiger shirt when he appeared on the TV programme Saturday Night Live, Hilfiger's street cred status soared.
"My thought has always been to work outside the box," explains the bright-eyed Mr Hilfiger when we finally meet after CNN has finished filming. "Musicians attract a younger audience. If Britney or a rock star wears [my clothes], the fans will want to wear them. It created a marketing philosophy of doing business." Others followed his celebrity endorsement lead. Armani linked up with Ricky Martin and Versace with Elton John and Madonna, but Hilfiger was there first and makes no apology for cultivating these associations. "Back in the 1950s, baseball players endorsed bats, and everybody wanted a Micky Mantle baseball bat. It is a really simple philosophy; nobody had done musicians and cool celebrities before. Sponsoring Formula One added more cool to the brand."
Cool is a key word in Hilfiger's vocabulary and he is the picture of middle-aged vitality and polish. Fit and loose limbed, he is spread out in an armchair, dressed in chinos, runners and a crisp blue open-necked shirt, the very incarnation of his preppy look. A big smile, displaying impressively white teeth, flashes on and off.
I ask him about the continual use of patriotic red, white and blue, the signature colours both of the Hilfiger brand and of the US flag signifying the all-American spirit of his collections. "Colour is extremely important in collections," he says. "It is very emotional. Our colours are very happy, very positive and we have always had red, white and blue which is more of a staple combination." In his revealing and well-researched book All American, he advises those unsure of what to wear of the safety of classic American styles.
Born in Elmira, a small town in upstate New York, as one of nine children, he started his career in the late 1960s selling customised jeans. His father's ancestors were from Bavaria and his mother, Virginia, is half-Irish, half-Scottish. "My mother was related to the Robert Burns family, but was never able to tell anyone because Burns was a womaniser and a boozer," he says with a grin. "My great grandmother was a Burns and my grandfather was Irish, from Derry, called Gerrity." Two years ago John Hume gave Hilfiger a tour of historic Derry.
"I had financed a movie called Proud which was filmed there, a true story of World War Two about a convoy of US sailors who arrived in Northern Ireland on the USS Mason and were treated like heroes. They were African American and were looked down on in America and put on a destroyer escort laden down with bombs. But they made it across the Atlantic." This was Hilfiger's first foray into film (he was executive producer of the movie) and he says proudly that it was premiered at Tribeca Film Festival earlier that week "and it was 87-year-old director, Ossie Davis's last film before he passed away."
Stephen Rea, who stars in the movie, was dressed personally by Hilfiger for the part and testifies to his generosity. "He has eyes like a hawk, and he picked the clothes and put them on me in the dressing room. I argue about costume many times, but I didn't argue with him. I thought he was great. He sent his private plane from Derry to Dublin for me and a couple of weeks later a huge FedEx box of clothes arrived for me and the kids; it's fantastic stuff."
If American sportswear classics form the basis of many of Hilfiger's collections, Irish textiles have also played a part. "I love Donegal and Irish tweeds," he said, "but they are very heavy and even though they look great, people nowadays don't wear heavy wool. You can't wear these tweed jackets indoors. Italians take the Irish ideas of weave, fleck and herringbone and make them in lightweight fabrics." Many of these feature in the winter menswear collection which includes thick, but lightweight cabled jumpers - "the Irish fishermen's sweaters are always in my collections," he says, fingering a russet zip-fronted number. The detail and finish of these clothes are impressive.
The Hilfiger image in Europe may be more preppy than sporty, and the brand motif more discreet than garish, but "big branded logos are very dated these days," he says. "The look is global, but Europeans appreciate fashion in different ways and have a passion for finer fabrics and more sophistication. Europeans are not as shy about paying high prices for denim as they are in the US. Europe makes great jeans with great washes and great fits and they have inspired the whole jeans market. In the States, the masses are accustomed to buying big jeans brands like Levis and Lee at low prices. Europeans look at fashion like an art form, whereas in the US it is not that significant." In Ireland, Hilfiger denims sell from €70 up to €175 for lined jeans.
The global jeans market may well be one of the targets behind the Hilfiger Corporation's acquisition of the Karl Lagerfeld collections last December. "We met when he photographed me for Bazaar magazine and he invited me to his home and we came to know each other. He asked me what my plans were and then suggested that I buy his collections. He is very interested in expanding his own brand and wants to go lower-end. One man's strength is global, with American sportswear as its soul, and one man's strength is couture and more, and all about Karl. Do you know he has never designed jeans, except one for Chanel at $500? If he can make KL jeans at $100 for men and women, we already have a $200m business."
The Paris-based designer's success with a once-off capsule collection for Swedish giant H&M obviously impressed Hilfiger. "That showed that Karl Lagerfeld, the genius designer, could do something other than couture, other than finer collections, without it hurting his reputation. He is 66 now and he figures he has more years in the business. He wanted to advance, but he needed a vehicle to do this and we have it." Hilfiger also intends to make use of Lagerfeld's design, advertising and marketing skills.
Another venture he is involved with is a reality show for CBS called TheCut, which will be broadcast this summer. "It is a US-based programme which will take 16 young designers from all over the US and put them through design challenges. The winner will get to design a collection for me." This initiative is another example of Hilfiger's ability to identify and exploit a popular trend to his advantage. "It was so obvious," he said, "it was low-hanging fruit - an easy pick."
Some 20 years ago Hilfiger projected his newly-formed company into the premier league with a $3 million ad campaign that precociously announced that the four great designers for men were RL (Ralph Lauren), CK (Calvin Klein), PE (Perry Ellis) and TH (Tommy Hilfiger). Given his plans for further pan-European and global brand expansion, TH may overtake them all, with lucrative harvests yet to come.