In the gridiron of fashion, designer Tommy Hilfiger is America’s favorite quarterback who, with a knowing wink and smile, everyone loves to root for as he leads his team globally forward. For over 30 years, he has brought his irreverent touch to American classics and along the way reinvented not only the preppy look, but also the way fashion markets. As part of The Impression/CFDA, Kenneth Richard spoke with the red, white and blue champion about his days as a rookie, surviving the limelight, his iconic campaigns, Gigi and showmanship. Visit The Impression for the complete interview.

Kenneth Richard: Tommy, appreciate you taking the time to sit together and chat. Was interested to learn that you started off as a retailer. What provoked that brave venture at such a young age?

Tommy Hilfiger: “The fashion/music revolution. It was in 1969, the summer of Woodstock, and I was working in a boutique for the summer in Hyannis, Cape Cod. The boutique was like a hippie gift shop, with incense and black light posters and candles and cool stuff. That was a really exciting time for me. When I went back to my hometown of Elmira, New York, I decided with a couple of school friends to open a shop we called People’s Place. We sold bell-bottom jeans, fringe vests, I mean, like, really cool clothes, and within a few years I decided I really wanted to build my own brand.”

K.R.: Were you a brander from the beginning?

T.H.: “Well, I always thought you needed three things: you need great product, some business sense, and great marketing – always. I’ve always respected people who understand the marketing aspect and it was very much a part of my focus from the very beginning to do the marketing in a very unique way.”

K.R.: Can we chat about being different and embracing change? As a marketer, how do you know it is time to move on?

T.H.: “I think that there’s an innate gut feel that you have when you know it’s time to move on, If you don’t have the next big idea, you can get stuck hanging on to the old. But I’ve always been one to think of the next big idea before the old one gets still, because I think that in marketing if you don’t move on, you could become history, and I think that stands to reason with everything we’re talking about. If you look at what’s going on with the tech world and look what’s going on with social media, we want to be a step ahead. We don’t want to be a step behind because if you fall behind, you fall way behind, but if you’re a step ahead, you can be with the program and you have the ability to have the vision ahead of you. I don’t want to drive with rear view mirrors. I want to drive with the vision ahead. Fortunately, we have a great team who are always thinking ahead and even though we do lot of classic clothing, we do classics with a twist, we do something different with the classics. And in terms of the marketing and advertising, I like pushing the button and pushing the envelope.”

K.R.: So about that envelope, your shows have pushed the bounds of fashion showmanship. What inspired all of that?

T.H.: “Boredom. I don’t want to just see models walk up and down a white runway. That is probably as boring as you could get. And if you don’t put on a show, it’s not memorable. So I think that to be memorable and to make a statement and do something unique, you have to put on a ‘show.’

We think that doing something spectacular is more important than having a billboard on the West Side Highway or a television ad. We think that doing something like what we’ve been doing is so important globally because the photos resonate. When we have Kendall and Gigi on the runway, we’re talking about getting almost a billion impressions through social media. You don’t get that with normal models on a normal runway. You have to do something exciting, unique and different; we benefit tremendously from doing a real show.

I think it’s modern thinking to ask yourself what a consumer really wants to see. And now, with the change in the fashion business, we are leading the way with a few others to do buy now, wear now, open to the public. It is a direct result of the consumer telling us she wants to see something on the runway and buy it that day and wear it the next day.

So we’re breaking the mold this fall and not going to do the traditional editors and buyers only fashion show, putting clothes on the runway that you won’t see in the stores for another six months. By the time they get there, it’s old news. This is what our consumers have told us. So we are doing buy now, wear now, and we’re featuring the Gigi Collection because we feel Gigi is the “It girl” of today, who resonates with an enormous fan base. So we invited her into our design studio to design with us and we created a whole collection. Gigi by Tommy Hilfiger will be launching at a live show in September with a buy now, wear now component and entertainment, because I think that if it’s again just a show, then it would be great but it wouldn’t be phenomenal. We want to mix fame, fashion, art, music, entertainment all into one spectacle that will be incredibly breakthrough, memorable, and unique. It’s about the pop culture of today.”