The future, with Tommy Hilfiger, is now. In less than a month, the American designer launched an irreverent campaign for Fall/Winter 2022, presented a new logo, surprised the world with a fabulous collection made four hands with one of the industry’s biggest promises, and celebrated the return to New York with its Tommy Factory, a place where you live under the sign of rebellion, optimism and creativity. Life is all forward.
The future, with Tommy Hilfiger, is now. In less than a month, the American designer launched an irreverent campaign for Fall/Winter 2022, presented a new logo, surprised the world with a fabulous collection made four hands with one of the industry’s biggest promises, and celebrated the return to New York with its Tommy Factory, a place where you live under the sign of rebellion, optimism and creativity. Life is all forward.
On the day Tommy Hilfiger officially returned to New York — the place where “it all started”, as he will say later — to present the Spring/Summer 2023 proposals of his eponymous brand, the city was dressed up to honor another anniversary of 9/11. In the streets, usually anarchic and noisy streets, one could feel the calm that is proper of solemn moments. The sun that tried to break through the gray and heavy skies was time and again denied by the wind and rain, in a kind of foreshadowing of a late afternoon that would be a kind of deluge. But we’ll get to that in a moment. When, at ten in the morning, we enter the Tommy Hilfiger headquarters on Madison Avenue, the future is already happening. Weeks before, the announcement of a gender-inclusive collection with British designer Richard Quinn took the fashion world by storm: with a limited edition, Tommy Hilfiger X Richard Quinn was a kind of summary of the perfect union between the preppy style of the American creator and the cracked couture of Quinn — a fabulous mix of two aesthetics, apparently opposites, but that ultimately complement each other perfectly. A double innovation, as Tommy Hilfiger X Richard Quinn showed, for the first time, the brand new THMonogram logo — designed by Fergus Purcell, the logo reflects the spirit of innovation inherent in the Tommy Hilfiger DNA — remixed with some characteristic elements of Quinn, such as flowers and quilting, and engraved on puffer jackets, pants, pea coats and backpacks. In August the campaign for Fall/Winter 2022, entitled Tommy Factory, had come out. Photographed by Craig McDean and styled by Katie Grand, it is starred by figures like Kate and Lila Moss, Travis Barker, Anthony Ramos or Jon Batiste... and by Tommy himself, in a nod to Andy Warhol's factory — which Hilfiger knew, it should be noted — where creativity and imagination were the nourishment of all the talents that gathered there. The future, therefore, was in motion. All that remained was to unveil the stories behind that future.
“We were introduced by someone on my team. I was very impressed with his creativity. I saw his looks on the British Fashion Awards, Kylie Minogue was on stage wearing his clothes with her dancers and I was blown away. I thought that he was so talented, but I had already seen pictures of his show, when the Queen was sitting front row, [in 2018, Quinn was the winner of the Queen Elizabeth II Award for British Design, an award he received from the hands of the sovereign herself] so I knew of him. What I didn’t know was that as student he was wearing my clothes. I know a lot of people did, but I am happy Richard did — my tartan shirts, which are also my favorites.” Quinn returns the admiration. Introverted and observant, he is light years away from the image we have of someone who lives with the pressure of being the next big thing. “Tommy is one of the only American heritage brands, so when they reached out it was definitely a no-brainer to do it. They’re the best in their field in this kind of americana and archetypes like the varsity jacket, the chinos, the rugby jumpers, and like Tommy was saying I wore them growing up, so it’s probably closer to how I would dress personally than people would really think. People don’t really see that I match the clothes that I create so it was actually, on a personal level, really exciting. Initially people might think [that our aesthetics] are really far apart, the two companies, but they actually have a huge crossover.” We want to know how the creative process unfolded. “We have a design studio in Amsterdam, which is an hour from London, and we have a great team there. They were working with Richard, who is not only a designer, he’s also an artist. We had collaborated with brands and celebrities before, but never with a real, true, designer/artist. That gave us the opportunity to do something really special and different.” The end result is clearly of Tommy's liking. “It’s a very strong collection. Richard was able to put his creativity into taking our recipe and mixing it with his. They are collectors items. They are not normal fashion pieces.” They are not, indeed. Not in price, slightly above “ordinary” ready-to-wear, since here we are talking about a joint savoir-faire that has little to do with the massification of modern times. What, then, is the target of Tommy Hilfiger X Richard Quinn? Word to Hilfiger: “I think youthful people who love fashion, his fans, my fans, but people who love fashion and want something special. We launched a big shop in Printemps (Paris) and we heard that the King of Morocco was in last week and bought, like, twelve pieces. I don’t know him! He must be a young, cool person!”
Tommy Hilfiger speaks with the wise enthusiasm of one who likes to learn — from others, from the world, from himself. He is 71 years old, but he could be much younger. His spirit is that of someone who never grows old, who never gets tired of embracing “the new.” Even if that “new” is ways of of creating and communicating that are completely opposite to those that saw the birth of his first store, People's Place, in the 1970s, and those that united him with the street culture that exploded in the 1990s, with the important push of artists like Aaliyah or Snoop Dogg — by accident, on the day of the show Kanye West shared on Instagram that the images of the singer of Drop it Like it's Hot wearing a Tommy Hilfiger sweater had been one of the greatest strokes of genius in terms of marketing. Is that the trick to Tommy's longevity, the constant reinvention, the relentless search for new ways of doing, and thinking, fashion? Perhaps. “Keeping a brand relevant through associations and through injections of newness and freshness. And sometimes a way to inject newness and freshness is to do it from the outside, as opposed from inside. Our designers are incredibly talented, but they are working on the inside, so to get an outside point of view, and outside creativity, is energizing to the entire brand.” But there’s more. “You have to surround yourself with young people to understand what they are doing. They understand the culture. It’s all about the culture. And the culture touches lifestyle, it touches the psyche, and it also what moves the needle in society, pop culture. We’re living in a world where the culture is always changing very rapidly, but there is a culture that is tangible, that you can touch and feel.” The future, with Tommy Hilfiger, is always happening. Whether it’s a quiet morning when journalists from all over the globe visit the offices for the usual round of interviews, or a post-apocalyptic evening when the gods decide to shake the plans of a gigantic team that had prepared the return to the big apple in a dream setting — the wonderful Skyline Drive-In in Brooklyn, where the “tent” of the brand new Tommy Factory was set up, complete with surprises worthy of an amusement park —, trans- forming it into an altar drenched with storm clippings. In the past, the members of this “factory” were names like Britney Spears, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Puff Daddy, TLC or Salt-N-Pepa. Today, it is Winnie Harlow, Paloma Elsesser, Quannah Chasinghorse, Hari Nef, Julia Fox, Donna Jordan... and Bob Colacello, the iconic editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. “Coming back to New York is really special and important to me because this is where the brand was founded and where we started, four blocks away from here [Tommy’s headquarters are on Madison Avenue, one of the most intrepid of the city]. New York needed a boost during Fashion Week, because I don’t think enough designers have been showing, and I would like to contribute to doing something really special for the community, but at the same time doing something that is disruptive and something that has never been done before”, said Hilfiger during the meeting with Vogue Portugal. “The show will be see-now-buy-now because we think that the youthful costumer wants immediate gratification, they don’t want to see it on the runway in September and wait until February to get it. They will have seen it on social media, they will have seen it on celebrities, they will have seen it in magazines, they will have seen it all over.” Hours later, the heartfelt applause from the audience, which was despairing under an overwhelming rain, was the proof that was missing: this is the way to go. Once again.
Translated from the original on The Butterfly Effect issue from Vogue Portugal, published October 2022.Full story and credits on the print issue.
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