Everything He Touches Turns to Tommy

The empty hallways of Elmira Free Academy are filled with the universal sensations of the American high school. The scent of frying fat drifts from the cafeteria. A custodian’s mop slaps the floor. When the bell sounds, students explode from a dozen classrooms, crowding the corridor with noise and fashion labels: CK, Nautica, Polo, Tommy Hilfiger. But Hilfiger outnumbers them all. Indeed, so many students--black, white, Asian, Latino--wear the Hilfiger label, it’s easy to imagine that the school team’s name has been changed from the Blue Devils to the Hilfigers.

Carlos Flores, a 17-year-old Elmira senior in a Hilfiger shirt, explains the fascination: “When you wear his clothes, you can relax because you know you are wearing something that’s on TV, that’s respected. Somebody might say, ‘Hey, that shirt’s ugly.’ But you know it’s Hilfiger, and that makes it all right.”

The Hilfiger trend at this school may be exaggerated. Elmira, N.Y., after all, is Tommy’s hometown. But his clothes are in high schools and shopping malls nationwide. In less than five years, Tommy Hilfiger has become a brand name and a pop personality whose annual take-home rivals Denzel Washington’s.

He has expanded his line, and his appeal, to include businessmen in suits, toddlers in overalls and women who lean toward the classics.

Devotees can see Tommy conduct interviews on MTV. They can plumb his fashion sense in his new book on style, titled “all american.” And if that’s not enough, they can make a pilgrimage to a Hilfiger superstore in Beverly Hills, the first in the world, which is scheduled to open Nov. 16.

Although the opening of a Rodeo Drive store signals to some that Hilfiger is already yesterday’s news among urban sophisticates, he has seized the loyalties of a broad cross-section of Americans. These fans have made Tommy Hilfiger a $600-million-a-year business, and they have turned his company’s stock into one of the market’s hottest fashion issues. All this despite the fact that many in the fashion industry insist that Hilfiger is not a real designer.

“He’s not a designer in the classic sense, like [Isaac] Mizrahi,” says Marie Essex, chairwoman of the fashion department at Parsons School of Design in New York. Many Parsons graduates work in Hilfiger’s design department, but the school’s students are more fascinated by his success than his designs. “He’s more a merchandiser and a retailer,” she says. “His success is due to the fact that he hangs out with Snoop Doggy Dogg.”

Ambitious fashion students with an eye toward profit would do well to study how Hilfiger happened. “He’s like a living textbook of how it can be done,” says Dean Stadel, who teaches the only business course Parsons offers for fashion designers. “Fashion is a business environment, not an ivory tower. A successful designer business is built on complex relationships with suppliers, retailers and the consumer. Tommy is very good at working those relationships. He is very good at selling himself.”

Now Tommy will set up shop in what must be the country’s best-known retail arena: Beverly Hills. Long a presence on the billboards above L.A., Hilfiger’s planting of his flagship store on Rodeo Drive marks his entry into street-level competition with such high-toned neighbors as Hermes, Gucci and Fred Hayman.

Inside the two-story, 20,000-square-foot store, Hilfiger will offer his mainstays--crisp but colorfully casual clothes for men--and a variety of departments. Sort of a department store for Tommy, it will be nothing like Sears. Themed areas will include one for golf, another for small leather goods and an “exclusive rock ‘n’ roll collection.” And instead of a department store lunch counter or the ubiquitous coffee bar, it will feature a Wolfgang Puck cafe.

“The flagship store will be a chance to show everything Tommy does,” says Catherine Fisher, Hilfiger’s spokeswoman.

Hilfiger’s success has been fueled by two factors: marketing genius and the raw power of money. The money is visible in the aggressive advertising blitz--almost $20 million last year alone--that has made Hilfiger a household name. The genius can be seen in a middle-aged white man’s embrace of almost everything in youth culture from prep to hip-hop.

In a business that rewards both celebrity and youth, Tommy established himself first with young rappers, whose influence is amplified through music videos and TV. In 1994 he dressed Snoop Doggy Dogg for an appearance on “Saturday Night Live.” Soon his clothes were adopted by other rap artists, including Mobb Deep and Grand Puba. Eventually the relationship between the clothes and the music became so tight that Hilfiger wound up in rap lyrics.

At first, it is difficult to figure how Hilfiger--a slightly built man with a receding hairline, a huge toothy smile and a style that is blue-blazer basic--became so popular with the urban young. He sells mostly plain chino-type pants and classic shirts with little twists like decorated buttonholes or bright colors. But Hilfiger’s straight-arrow style came at a time when young people seemed to be ready for a neat alternative to grunge. “People wanted to clean up a little, to look more stylish,” recalls Joanne Deluca, co-author of “Street Trends,” a recent book on youth culture. “When artists began wearing Tommy on MTV, his clothes began to fly out of the stores.”

Hilfiger also benefited from relaxed dress codes in the American workplace, which sent many men shopping for structured but comfortable shirts and pants. In September, even the blue-suited sharks on the floor of the stodgy New York Stock Exchange experimented with casual Fridays.

In appealing first to the MTV set, Hilfiger bypassed the traditional route to fashion fame. In the past, most designers began with a high-end line, which few ordinary people could afford. Later, they cashed in on their fame, or notoriety, by lending their name to mass market clothes. Hilfiger instead used music videos like a fashion runway to reach directly into the homes of young trendsetters. He played to the popularity of status-conveying labels, ensuring that his logo was big and bright.

Hilfiger also used clever pricing to win market share. His clothes have always cost less than those of his main name-brand competitors, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein. If a Ralph Lauren button-down costs $50, a Hilfiger is $40. He has been able to undercut them in part because his company grew out of an unusual partnership. Typically, a designer such as Calvin Klein or Ralph Lauren will form a company that contracts with factories to make clothes. Hilfiger never formed his own company; instead, in 1989, he formed a direct alliance with clothing manufacturer Silas Chou of Hong Kong, creating Tommy Hilfiger Inc.

With this partnership, Hilfiger got the substantial financial backing he needed and Chou the stability he wanted. Chou had long manufactured high-quality casual clothes, the kind sold by the Gap or the Limited. However, he was worried that factories in cheap-labor countries might siphon away orders. Chou reasoned that if he owned a label with a successful designer--one whose persona might drive sales--he could keep his factories humming and also profit if the brand took off.

Fashion companies have come to depend on star designers--Klein, Lauren, Perry Ellis, Donna Karan--in much the same way that movie studios depend on star actors. Like a Harrison Ford movie, a pair of jeans with the right designer’s name is almost guaranteed to succeed.

“There’s a desperate need to have a peson, a name that the public can identify with,” says Arnold Cohen, a financial advisor to many fashion companies, including Hilfiger. “Silas Chou was an unknown, but he had the money and he was a manufacturing source,” Cohen continues. “He needed a name, and he found Tommy.”

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After leaving Elmira, Hilfiger dedicated himself to becoming a fashion brand name. He took a variety of jobs designing for established clothing companies until, in the mid-’80s, he teamed with businessman Mohan Murjani to launch an independent Tommy Hilfiger menswear collection. In 1986, Murjani and Hilfiger placed a billboard on Times Square announcing that a newcomer, with the initials TH, was about to dominate menswear. Unfortunately, Hilfiger and his partner could not live up to their audacious claim. While the billboard created plenty of talk (much of it critical of what was perceived to be overreaching self-promotion), the Hilfiger line generated only modest sales.

So in 1989, when that partnership ended, Hilfiger jumped at the chance to join Chou. The new company started more cautiously, hiring experienced executives from Lauren’s company and Liz Claiborne. One of those early hires, Jay Margolis, now chairman of Esprit clothing, recalls that Hilfiger recognized and capitalized on the media trend that was turning models and fashion designers into pop stars similar to rock and ‘n’ roll artists.

“In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, there was this whole designer, rock star, VH-1 thing that made a big deal of people like [super] models,” says Margolis, whose Esprit company competes with Hilfiger’s women’s wear. “An incredible effort was made to hype people in the fashion business, to make them into something like rock stars.”

The hype worked, says Margolis, because ordinary people who can’t sing or act like a superstar could at least buy the clothes those stars wore. “People are insecure. They want a reason to buy something,” says Margolis.

As a child of the 1960s, Tommy Hilfiger watched this phenomenon of hype firsthand as he devoted hours to studying the music and styles popular in the glamorous centers of culture far from upstate New York. Like millions of other young men, he idolized rock stars, especially the scowling and swaggering Mick Jagger.

“He was the kind of kid who read every issue of Rolling Stone cover to cover,” remembers Stanley Stroman, a childhood friend who stayed in Elmira. “He was into rock ‘n’ roll. He was a very smooth talker. And he had big dreams. He wanted everyone to know his name.”

Though Hilfiger possessed Mick Jagger’s wiry physique, he was not a gifted actor or musician. He was too small to be an athlete; he was an average student. But he was raised by a father who was a living example of other qualities that might also serve as the avenue to celebrity: charm and style.

A watchmaker by trade, Richard “Hippo” Hilfiger was such a popular figure in Elmira that today, long after his death, he is remembered fondly in downtown shops, at the Chamber of Commerce and at City Hall. “Everyone loved Hippo,” says Thomas Santulli, a county administrator based in Elmira. “He didn’t own the jewelry store that he worked in, but a lot of people thought he did. His personality was so bubbly that he brought people in. Everybody knew and liked Hippo, and I have to believe the store isn’t doing nearly so well now that he’s gone.”

Adds Betsy Hilfiger, Tommy’s younger sister: “Dad was the best dresser in town, and everyone really liked him. Tommy was always a clotheshorse and I think that came from my father.” (In the 1970 Elmira Free Academy yearbook, Tommy Hilfiger is the only senior wearing a herringbone jacket.) In fact, those who knew him well often referred to Tommy by his father’s nickname.

“You want to know why Hippo is so big?” says Frank Carey, an Elmira schoolmate. “You want to know why he’s so successful?” Suddenly he leaps out of his chair and sticks out his hand. “Hi, I’m Tommy Hilfiger,” he says with a big smile, a steady gaze and a firm handshake. “It’s great to meet you.”

Hilfiger was also known for the determination he would later need to thrive in a competitive industry. “Hippo succeeded because he doesn’t take no for an answer,” says Bruce Chalmers, a childhood friend who is a clothier in Elmira. “Once, he wanted to make this football team that had a minimum-weight requirement, but he was too skinny. He put weights in his pants so that he could pass the physical. He got on the team.”

Chalmers and others regard Hilfiger as Elmira’s favorite son and remember him as a charming fellow. The national press has agreed, anointing Hilfiger as fashion’s nice guy. That image is supported by Hilfiger’s deep involvement in philanthropy. For the past five years, he and his wife, Susan, have chaired fund-raising events for New York’s Fresh Air Fund, which sends city kids to the country for the summer. One of his eight siblings, a sister, suffers from multiple sclerosis and Hilfiger has been involved in raising money for MS research. He sponsored T-shirt sales during Sheryl Crow’s recent concert tour and donated the money to breast cancer research. In Elmira, Hilfiger has raised funds to build stands at the high school stadium and for a center serving youths from lower-income families.

But Chalmers cautions against the assumption that Tommy Hilfiger is a such a nice guy that he is a pushover in business. He recalls experimenting with a weekend sale that moved truckloads of Hilfiger gear in less than 48 hours. Chalmers began talking with Hilfiger about opening an outlet store.

“I thought he might be willing to help someone else make it too,” says Chalmers. “But before I knew it, Tommy’s sister called and said I wouldn’t get the store, that she was opening up an outlet right in Elmira. I guess they wanted to keep it all for themselves, and that’s OK. But Tommy could have at least told me personally. We haven’t spoken now in four years.”

A spokeswoman for Hilfiger offers a different version. She says Chalmers lacked the financial resources to make a store work and that he wanted to offer other brand names in a Hilfiger store, which is against the Hilfiger retailing philosophy. Last year, the Tommy Hilfiger outlet in Elmira, the one that got away from Bruce Chalmers, grossed $435,000.

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In some interviews he has granted (he declined to be interviewed for this article), Hilfiger has described himself as a scrawny, dyslexic kid who became the class clown to cover his embarrassment over poor grades. He has confessed to youthful acid trips, an early obsession with rock music and an affinity for the protest culture of the time. “We just hated everything about the Establishment,” he told Playboy recently. “We thought it sucked.”

It may have sucked then, but Hilfiger models are so often surrounded by Old Glory today that his advertising frequently evokes a political campaign.

The origins of Hilfiger’s all-American style can be seen in and around Elmira. The countryside is dotted with weathered red barns and rolling grain fields. Downtown Elmira is dominated by a graceful courthouse square. Its streets are lined with Victorian-era homes. Mark Twain spent 20 summers writing in Elmira, and the city’s two little leagues are named after Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

Elmira also gave Tommy Hilfiger his start in business management. In 1969, Hilfiger was a fifth-year high school student who couldn’t find bell-bottom jeans in local stores. He and two friends opened a small store that sold mostly bell-bottoms and head shop items--rolling paper, pipes, etc. The store opened at 3 o’clock, after the proprietors finished classes. Called People’s Place, it was a homespun business run more on gumption than anything else. To get stock, Hilfiger would carry a pocketful of cash 300 miles to New York, load his car with jeans and drive them home. When a flood ravaged Elmira in 1972, he quickly rented out space on high ground and for a while had the only clothing shop open for business.

By the mid-’70s, he had seven similar stores scattered around upstate New York, a sizable income and a car collection that included a Porsche, a Mercedes and a Jaguar. But gradually, with other retailers offering similar clothes and the economy of upstate New York falling into a deep recession, People’s Place went bankrupt in 1977. And Hilfiger was off to New York and a series of jobs in the fashion industry.

After his bankruptcy, Hilfiger and his wife, whom he met when she was hired to work at a People’s Place store, traveled to India to create clothes for a manufacturer. The casual pants and shirts were marketed under the name Tommy Hill, which they later discovered was trademarked by someone else. Returning to New York, both got jobs designing for Jordache until Hilfiger met Murjani in 1984.

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Today, the former teenage rag merchant who had to wait for the school bell before opening his shop door earns as much as $13 million a year, including stock options. He owns homes in Connecticut, Nantucket and Mustique, where he is Mick Jagger’s neighbor. The boy who once could get no closer to rock ‘n’ roll fame than a seat at a concert has hung out with David Bowie and owns a collection of guitars that are gifts from famous bands.

Ironically, Tommy Hilfiger’s arrival on Rodeo Drive and his popularity with the masses signal his decline as an innovator for the style-setters who define tomorrow’s fashion trends. “There’s a backlash. Progressive young people resent being used as a billboard for some big corporation’s name,” says author DeLuca. “If you’re seeing it in Elmira, then it’s already passe in the urban environment. He’s [Hilfiger] played out. People like to cheer the underdog, and he’s definitely not the underdog anymore.”

So far, this shift hasn’t diminished Wall Street’s enthusiasm for Hilfiger’s stock, which has stayed near the $50 mark most of this year, far above the $7.50 price of the initial public offering in 1992. The high price can be maintained, says Stadel, the Parsons business expert, if Hilfiger steps carefully through the next stages of his brand development, which will include expansion of his product line and more overseas sales.

“At this stage, designers go out and license people to sell all kinds of things, sheets, watches, towels, you name it, under their name,” Stadel says. “The key is to maintain your level of quality by staying very involved, so that the image is not eroded. Pierre Cardin has well over 200 licenses, all paying royalties on the Cardin items they sell. The quality is maintained for all of them. Other designers haven’t been able to do that, and they have suffered.”

The Hilfiger company is developing new lines and embarking on a global expansion to solidify its financial standing. Tommy went to Europe in September to offer his retail line and open a small store in London. Hilfiger children’s wear and women’s clothes are already for sale, and housewares are not too far off. All this growth is reflected at Hilfiger’s Manhattan headquarters, where design teams work feverishly and pending deals with new manufacturers are under review.

“To continue their success, they need to have very talented people at every level,” adds fashion business expert Cohen. “They need to maintain a clear sense of who they are and who their customers are. The days of making a lot of changes are over. People want the basics they get from Tommy. They can make small modifications in their traditional garments, but that’s it.” With a steadfast approach, Tommy Hilfiger could go on and on, just like Elvis. “Perry Ellis has been dead for a long time,” notes Cohen, “but the clothes still sell.”

Hilfiger’s customers, at least the ones at Elmira Free Academy, agree that once the glare of publicity fades and the image is no longer hot, it’s the clothes that matter. “It’s not a lifestyle for me, but the clothes,” says Gavin Reynolds, a 16-year-old African American student. “I’m happy for him, for all his success,” adds Johnny Phoummany, Reynolds’ schoolmate and the child of Laotian immigrants. “But I don’t want to be like Tommy, or anything like that. Give me the clothes. If they’re good, I’ll wear ‘em.”

If he can hang on to Johnny and Gavin and millions of others, Hilfiger will preserve the empire that fame created. But there is no denying that Tommy Hilfiger is becoming part of the Establishment he once abhorred. “There’s going to be someone else who is hot, a new big name, and it’s going to happen pretty soon,” Cohen says. “I know, because I’m working with the group that’s going to make it happen, just like it did for Tommy.”