Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger was born in 1951 in Elmira, New York, one of nine children. In 1969, still a teenager, he opened a shop called People's Place with friends in his home town, selling bell-bottoms and rock-and-roll clothes he bought in New York, and soon customised. The chain grew to several stores across upstate New York but went bankrupt in 1977, a lesson in business that Hilfiger often credits with his later success.

He moved to New York to work as a designer, and in the early 1980s met Mohan Murjani, an Indian textile magnate who wanted to launch a menswear line. With Murjani's backing, Hilfiger launched his own label in 1985 with updated versions of American classics: button-down shirts, chinos and blazers with a playful twist. The launch was announced by a Times Square billboard, devised by the adman George Lois, that placed his initials alongside those of Ralph Lauren, Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein. Critics scoffed, but customers came.

Through the 1990s the brand's flag logo and primary colours took on a life of their own. Hip-hop artists adopted its oversized jackets and rugby shirts, the rapper Snoop Dogg wore a Tommy sweatshirt on Saturday Night Live in 1994, and Hilfiger leaned into the moment, giving his clothes a looser fit and casting musicians including Aaliyah in campaigns. Sales soared, the company became one of the most valuable in American fashion, and Hilfiger was named the CFDA's menswear designer of the year in 1995.

The brand cooled in the early 2000s in the United States but grew strongly in Europe, where it was repositioned as premium sportswear. The private equity firm Apax Partners bought the company in 2006, and in 2010 it was sold to PVH Corp., owner of Calvin Klein, for about US$3 billion. Under PVH the brand has run its global business from Amsterdam.

Hilfiger has remained principal designer. Since 2016 the brand has experimented with "see now, buy now" runway shows, collaborations with Gigi Hadid, Zendaya and Lewis Hamilton, and Tommy Adaptive, a line launched in 2017 for people with disabilities. The red, white and navy flag, first stitched on shirts in 1985, is still the brand's emblem, now on shopfronts in about a hundred countries.