Tommy Hilfiger

Thomas Jacob "Tommy" Hilfiger (born in Elmira, New York, on March 24, 1951) is a world-famous fashion designer best known for his eponymous "Tommy Hilfiger" and "Tommy" brands. more...

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Biography

He grew up in an Irish Catholic family. The second of nine children, Hilfiger knew from a young age that he wanted to pursue a career in fashion. From then on, everyone knew of his dandy tendencies, though he continues to live straight life.

Rather than furthering his education, he started to work in retail at the young age of 18. He opened a store named "The People's Place", in upstate New York.

Hilfiger would trek down to New York City to get his hands on jeans and bell-bottom pants that weren't available in his hometown, and sold them in his store. People didn't respond as well as he would have hoped, and The People's Place went bankrupt after 7 years; when Hilfiger was 25.

After turning to the design aspect of clothing by designing for the rest of his stores in upstate New York (a total of 10), Hilfiger picked up the pieces and went to New York City with his now estranged wife, Susie. Although he was offered design assistant positions with designers Calvin Klein and Perry Ellis -- and was broke -- he turned them both down with greater plans in mind.

In 1984, he founded the Tommy Hilfiger Corporation (NYSE:THB) - which went public in 1992 - introducing his signature menswear collection. By 2004 the company had 5,400 employees and revenues in excess of $1.8 billion. Hilfiger was named Menswear Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America in 1995. In August 2005 Hilfiger announced he was selling his company and before the year ended, the company was purchased by Apax Partners for $1.6 billion, or $16.80 a share, all in cash.

In 2005, a CBS TV reality show called The Cut tracked the progress of sixteen contestants as they competed for a design job with Hilfiger in similar fashion to Donald Trump's The Apprentice. In the end Hilfiger chose Chris Cortez.

Currently dating Dee Ocleppo, Hilfiger has four children. His daughter Ally Hilfiger was featured in the MTV reality show Rich Girls.

Hilfiger has a house in Greenwich, Connecticut; a Manhattan apartment; a Vermont ski house; an island getaway on Mustique in the Caribbean; and summer houses in East Hampton, New York and Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Criticisms

Hilfiger has been criticised for manufacturing clothes in sweatshop conditions in the United States territory of Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands. As a U.S. Commonwealth, clothes made there can be labeled "Made in the USA" but federal labor laws including the minimum wage do not apply. In March 2000, the company (along with other defendants) settled a class action suit brought by Saipan garment workers which had alleged that their working conditions amounted to indentured servitude.

Read more at Wikipedia.org