The Fashion BusinessFigure 8.4.Young shoppers wearing logoed leisurewear, Churchill Square
Shopping Precinct, Brighton, UK, July 1999.
dependent on their franchised accessory and perfume retail for survival, there
was a real and obvious commercial problem here. Hilfiger on the other hand
had no couture salon to subsidize.
‘The future is limitless,’ he told DNR, 17 October 1997, ‘The challenge is
to maintain your credibility with the youth market. The secret to longevity
is truly to be a lifestyle brand.’ What has been astonishing has been the extent
of Hilfiger’s successful marketing of basic but expensively priced leisurewear
garments, such a baseball caps, puffa jackets and jeans, as highly desirable
‘designer’ fashion items.
A marketing technique which served Hilfiger well for a while was to pump
up the advertising hype. Through glamour advertising geared to specific
international youth markets and to the young black US market, Hilfiger’s
sales figures rocketed, based on appropriating marketing methods long
understood by the old couture salons in Paris. Thus Hilfiger and others launch
seasonal ‘collections’, as if they were couture shows, winning almost as much
press coverage as if they were. Just like the great couturiers, Hilfiger too
uses superstars at his collection launches, with Naomi Campbell and Kate
Moss strutting their stuff in his T-shirts at the London launch of his new
Sloane Street, London flagship store in 1997. Hilfiger firmly established his