Tommy Hilfiger Leans Into ‘Fashion-tainment’

As far as unique fashion week venues go, a decommissioned Staten Island ferry purchased by Colin Jost and Pete Davidson in 2022 certainly ranks high. And though the vessel didn’t shepherd guests from the South Street Seaport to the fifth borough (wouldn’t that have been something!), it succeeded in cementing Tommy Hilfiger’s reputation as the ultimate showman.

Hilfiger, the man, has reinvented his label many times over. There was the logo-heavy play on customers’ nostalgia for the brand’s 1990s heyday. And then, when the effectiveness of that began to wane, there were the celebrity collaborations with Gigi Hadid, Zendaya and Lewis Hamilton. That brought buzz back for a while, but with the challenges brought on by the pandemic, not to mention the ubiquity of celebrity brands in the 2020s, it was clearly time for another evolution.

He described the latest incarnation of Tommy Hilfiger, on display Sunday evening, as “fashion-tainment.” And it was exactly that: a big, splashy fashion show on the water with dozens of celebrities and a finale performance by the Wu-Tang Clan. It was only the latest example of how Tommy Hilfiger is engaging with popular culture in 2024. (Bringing the K-Pop group Stray Kids to the Met Gala was another big one, as is the continued embrace of Formula One). Then, there are the campaigns with celebrities. (Fall 2024 featured Patrick Schwarzenegger, who sat front row, and his fiancée Abby Champion, who walked the show.)

Big marketing moments, always an integral part of the Hilfiger brand, have taken on an extra importance as parent company PVH Corp. attempts to reposition the label. The “PVH+ Plan,” introduced by chief executive Stefan Larsson in 2022, calls for Hilfiger, along with Calvin Klein, to take on a more elevated positioning with better marketing, an emphasis on hero products and a more nimble supply chain that can better respond to trends. The brands will also rely less on sales from second-tier department stores and e-commerce sites, and more from the brands’ own stores and websites.

Hilfiger described the approach as “think and behave like a luxury brand, but be able to operate like a fast fashion brand,” speeding up the timeline of bringing product to market and shortening lead times, while maintaining the sheen of the designer branding.

“We think we’re positioned in a sweet spot because we’re premium — we’re affordable luxury,” Hilfiger told The Business of Fashion at his office ahead of Sunday’s show. “And as the consumer is experiencing sticker shock from the luxury brands, they have to recalibrate and think, ‘Okay, where am I going to purchase my products?’ They want to buy affordable, quality fashion, but they still want a designer name.”

The theme for the spring 2025 collection was nauti-cana — striped shirting, regatta jackets, intentionally-wrinkled cottons and easy loose knits, mixed with the more traditionally prep pieces Tommy Hilfiger is known for (think letterman jackets, chinos and polos). “It’s a twist on nautical that I think has not been done before,” he said. “I never want to do what has been done before, but I wanted to maybe take a theme that is fresh and familiar, but new and modern — so the shapes, the fabrication, the detail and the way we’re going to show it, the way we’re styling it.”

It isn’t overly nostalgic, though the reference points are clear. The fit is refined and closer to the body. (Even when there is baginess, it still feels precise and considered.) It all feels very grown-up — less summer break, more adult yacht trip. There are hints of branding — a TH insignia here, the tri-color logo there — but it’s not as overt as you might’ve expected from the brand five years ago. It’s certainly more aligned with the “quiet luxury” aesthetic Sofia Richie Grainge, a recently-announced brand ambassador, has become the poster child for.

Progress on PVH+ is uneven. PVH is a long way from its target annual revenue of $12.5 billion (sales in 2023 totalled $9.2 billion, up 2 percent from the year before). In the second quarter of this year, Tommy Hilfiger’s sales fell 4 percent to $1.1 billion, as growth in North America was offset by a decline in Europe, where the pruning of wholesale has been more aggressive. PVH’s stock is down 21 percent this year.

The company has made the case that it needs more time – it acknowledged in late 2023 that the original end date of 2025 for PVH+ was overly optimistic, pushing its revenue target and a goal of a 15 percent operating margin (from 10.1 percent last year) back by a year or two. The pieces have only just been put in place at Tommy Hilfiger: longtime president and chief brand officer Avery Baker – the architect of those celebrity collaborations – stepped down in the summer of 2023. A replacement, H&M Group alum Lea Rytz Goldman, was appointed only this past spring.

The brand has slowly, sporadically been dipping its toes back into the fashion week pool. It returned to New York in September 2022, two and a half years after its last runway (in London, right before Covid-19 lockdowns — and if you don’t count a brief jaunt to the metaverse), with a “see-now-buy-now” Andy Warhol’s Factory-inspired production featuring live music performances and a collaboration with Richard Quinn. It sat out fashion week entirely the following year, and returned in February 2024 with a relatively (compared to the usual scale) intimate presentation at the Grand Central Oyster Bar and the more traditional six-months-ahead schedule.

“It was a great event, but we knew we had to do something better,” Hilfiger said.

After settling on the nautical theme, a call went out to Davidson to inquire about the MV John F. Kennedy, which he bought with fellow Staten Island native Colin Jost in 2022. (Jost sat front row, alongside current “Saturday Night Live” cast member Marcelo Hernandez, Blackpink’s Jisoo, brand ambassador Damson Idris, Fall 2024 campaign star Patrick Schwarzenegger, Stray Kids’ Felix and Lee Know, Olympians Gabby Thomas and Suni Lee, among others.)

“Every time, it has to elevate,” he said. “Every time we do a show, we want to outdo the last show. It’s always a challenge, but it’s an exciting challenge, because it’s a journey, and I love the journey.”

To return to the New York schedule in such a big way is about more than checking the boxes of a marketing strategy. For Hilfiger, it’s more personal.

“It all started in New York. I’m from upstate New York, but I founded the brand in New York City. We thought it was important to come home,” he explained. “But, at the same time, there has been criticism about New York Fashion Week from a lot of different angles, and we thought it would be important to support New York Fashion Week. We thought that, if we were to come back to New York and do something exciting, maybe it would give support and give a boost to New York Fashion Week in general.”

New York is also having a moment among the ever-important Gen-Z consumer, he argued: “A lot of young people are in New York, loving it — they’re in Brooklyn, they’re in Queens, they’re in Harlem, they’re in SoHo, they’re in NoHo. I mean, they’re really running the city now,. And I really believe that the Gen-Z audience is the most relevant audience in the world, and we have to be close to them.”

Even as the brand continues to think ahead, Hilfiger attributes many of its recent wins to timing: Much of what’s working now — the strategic celebrity pair-ups, the flashy marketing moments, the leaning into the Americana look — have been a part of the formula for many, many years. We’re just seeing it bear fruit.

“We’ve always been here, for 40 years. And it’s just that the timing is everything,” he said. “Our motive is to continue to build this into the American global lifestyle brand.”