Faridaz.com

Fashion Designer Tommy Hilfiger or Thomas Jacob Hilfiger was born on March 24 1951 in New York and he grew up in an Irish Catholic family.

He was the second kid of nine children and from a very young age he was interested in fashion so at the age of 18 he decided to work in a retail firm.

Tommy Hilfiger opened his first store in the year 1969 in upstate New York named “The People’s Place”, as he always aimed to work with a product for the people.

Hilfiger would go to New York to buy Jeans and Bell bottom pants to sell it in his town as they were unavailable there. So as he had aimed in bringing up his store, his efforts all went in vain and by the age of 25 his store was bankrupt.

He now turned towards the designing aspect of clothes and he designed for almost 10 stores in New York and later in 1970’s he moved to New York with his wife Susie.

He was also offered the position of a design assistant of bigwig designers like Calvin Klien and Perry Ellis but he turned down their offers.

Then Tommy Hilfiger met Mohan Murjani (he owned the license of Gloria Vanderbilt jeans), who gave backing to his business. Later on Murjani went bankrupt and Tommy Hilfiger bought him back his position. A year after Tommy Hilfiger went public in 1982.

Hilfiger was the president of the company from 1982 to 1989 but he was designing under this label from 1984. His collection consists of men’s jeans, sports wear, women’s wear, Children’s wear, fragrances, footwear, lingerie, home furnishing, eyeglasses and watches and many more accessories.

Tommy Hilfiger was awarded “From the Catwalk to the Sidewalk Award” at the first VH1 Fashion and Music Awards (in 1995), and in 1995 was named the men’s wear designer of the year.

Filed under: Fashion Designers, International fashion designers