The Most Influential Person On AIB This Week Is Tommy Hilfiger

 Tommy Hilfiger is a fashion designer whose brand has become popular among the upper-class and casual buyers of society. The signature of his brand is red, white, and blue. He became popular in 1984 after he was approached and designed a men’s sportswear line with his name.

He was born on March 24, 1951, in Elmira, New York. He is the second of nine children of an Irish-American family. His mother was a nurse, while his father made watches at a local jewelry shop. He attended Elmira Free Academy.
 
Tommy has been an entrepreneur from a young age. As a teenager, he used to buy jeans in New York City, remade and sold them for a markup in Elmira. When he was 18 years old, Hilfiger opened a store in Elmira, called The People’s Place, where he ventured into selling hippie supplies like bell-bottoms, incense, and records. He became successful had chain stores, and was earning a six-figure income. In 1977,  a downturn in the economy affected his business, and he was bankrupt.
 
Shortly after the bankruptcy, Tommy got married to Susie Corona, an employee at one of his stores. Shortly after the bankruptcy, the couple moved to Manhattan, where they were hired as a husband and wife design team by the apparel brand Jordache, and were fired after a year.
 
However, Tommy developed a reputation as a hard-working young designer and was considered for jobs at Perry Ellis and Calvin Klein, but he desired his label. He later joined an Indian entrepreneur, Mohan Murjani, who was looking for a designer to head a men’s sportswear line. He also enrolled in courses on commerce and business, relating to the fashion industry.
 
He later moved to New York City, where he worked with different labels, in 1979, he set up his own company called Tommy Hill, with his trademark of red, white, and blue. In 1982, he founded Click Point, the company which designed women’s clothing. By the early 1990s, the oversized version of his clothesline was widely accepted by the hip-hop world. He partnered with Runway of Dreams to create a line of adaptive clothing for children with disabilities.
 
In 2012, he received the Council of Fashion Designers of America’s Geoffrey Beane Lifetime Achievement.
 
Till today, Hilfiger is the principal designer of his brand. He has more than 1,400 stores in 90 countries.