Back in the day, early 90’s? Very late 80’s? Tommy Hilfiger was DA BOMB, it was everywhere, it was it man, it was it. I remember as a child walking through the department store and it was so big that even the sacred, worshiped all-mighty Ralph Lauren polo shirts were being ignored.
Then it started to get ‘ghetto’ as rappers started to wear it.
Soon the brand began to fade – now i almost never see, it is but a dim memory of what once was.
So umm, what happened to it? Passing fashion? If so, how is Ralph Lauren still going strong? Urban / rapper association? Other brands have had that too, and still going strong.
What happened to Tommy?
(And is Tommy Bahama connected to Tommy Hilfiger?)
I remember that he sold the clothing company a few years back. Thankfully the new owners haven’t altered the design of Hilfiger boxer shorts yet, so I still buy those.
ETA: Nope, it looks like Tommy Bahama is just a name of a line of clothing with no connection to Mr. Hilfiger. Wiki tells me that it’s owned by Oxford Industries of Atlanta, GA.
I don’t know about the clothing, but I bought a Hilfiger wallet many years ago because it had the configuration I was looking for to hold all the cards I have. It has yet to develop any problems whatsoever. The stitching is still tight and unfrayed, and the leather just keeps getting more buttery. It’s probably the best wallet I’ve ever owned.
They’ve let the brand sink into mediocrity. It’s not defined as anything anymore. It may not be possible to be the hottest brand forever, but that’s why any brand needs to carve out a niche for itself. Ralph Lauren has persevered for a long time because it’s the brand if you want to look preppy without actually being preppy. What is Tommy? It’s just a middle of the road undistinctive style.
PVH bought them early this year because they have a pretty good global presence that their existing brands all lacked.
As someone else mentioned, everything has its time.
Slight hijack: The opposite thing has happened to Puma. I remember back in the early 90s when they the type of cheap, unhip offbrand you’d find at Payless. Now it’s something that a lot of “cool kids” wear.
I always wore Levi 501 button fly, and whatever tshirts I scrounged up, and for years I got all my shoes at work so I had steel toed loafers, cowboy boots, engineer boots, sneakers and low heeled pumps [!]
I still have a few Hilfiger garments: two sweaters to be exact. I’ve never been a fan of those ostentatious disasters with the giant LOOK AT ME, I AM A TOMMY HILIFGER SHIRT! embossed across the chest, but his logo-free clothing still looks nice.
Interesting thread…brand names (unless supported by frequent advertising) seem to ahve a finite life. Take “McGregor”-it was a respected brand of clothing in the USA, till about 1970-then it was allowed to die. Now it is a popular brand in Europe. Hilfiger is a mystery-it was a brand a lot like Polo-it was targetted to young men, and it made a ton of money-why did they let it die? The really sad thing…at the end of a brand’s life, it usually is reduced to a name, slapped on low-end discount house crap, and sold at Walmart or some other low end retailer.
I always wondered why GM allowed the Oldsmobile brand to die-it was a 103 year old brand, and was well know-why didn’t they spin it off and make it a high end car brand? New dealers, new look, higher price…jsut like Toyota did with their Lexus brand.
Because for about 70 of those 103 years Oldsmobile was the brand of car you bought when you were ready to be put on an ice floe and left to die. It is pretty hard to change that perception and GM already has two other brands that fit that market: Cadillac for old people woth money and Buick for old people without money.
