page_title: Tommy Hilfiger
section_title: Style and impact
hierarchical_section_title: Tommy Hilfiger / Style and impact
caption_attribution_description: English: Tommy Hilfiger Azerbaijan
context_page_description: Thomas Jacob Hilfiger is an American fashion designer and founder of Tommy Hilfiger Corporation.
  After starting his career by co-founding a chain of jeans/fashion stores called People's Place in upstate New York in the 1970s, he began designing preppy clothing for his own eponymous menswear line in the 1980s. The company later expanded into women's clothing and various luxury items such as perfumes and went public in 1992.
  Hilfiger's collections are often influenced by the fashion of music subcultures and marketed in connection with the music industry, with celebrities such as American R&B artist Aaliyah in the 1990s. In 2005, contestants in the CBS reality show The Cut competed for a design job with Hilfiger in a similar fashion to The Apprentice. In 2006, Hilfiger sold his company for $1.6 billion to Apax Partners, who next sold it in 2010 to Phillips-Van Heusen for $3 billion. He remains the company's principal designer, leading the design teams and overseeing the entire creative process. In 2012, Hilfiger was awarded the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America.
context_section_description: While Hilfiger's earliest designs drew on 1960s counterculture and fashion, since the 1980s his designs typically draw from classic American New England styles. His initial lines for the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation were primarily designed to appeal to young men looking for designer clothing, and Tommy Hilfiger became one of the most prominent brands in 1990s sportswear, with Polo Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Nautica, DKNY, and Donna Karan also popular. Each of these companies created distinctive wardrobes based upon stylish but wearable, comfortable and interchangeable multi-purpose clothes, all with a focus on luxury.
  Hip hop fashion at large began incorporating the Hilfiger brand in the 1990s, and when Snoop Doggy Dogg wore a Hilfiger sweatshirt during an appearance on Saturday Night Live, it sold out of New York City stores the next day. Moreover, Hilfiger courted the new hip hop market, and rappers like Puffy and Coolio walked during his runways shows. Specific items like Tommy Hilfiger carpenter jeans became particularly popular, with the trademark logo displayed on the hammer loop. Hilfiger continues to maintain multiple fashion lines, some focused on wearable "casual" clothes while others take on various haute couture commissions. Aside from the preppy styles of his youth, Hilfiger has also always been influenced by the style of a wide variety of American icons, including Grace Kelly, James Dean, Deborah Harry, Iggy Pop, Farrah Fawcett, Steve McQueen, Jackie and John F. Kennedy, and Andy Warhol. Many of his designs draw prominently from the styles of hard rock and the pop music industry.
caption: A young Tommy Hilfiger customer in Azerbaijan wears the brand in 2013. His shirt displays a variation of the distinctive three-tone logo.
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