Ahh, the ’90s. The music was “dope” and the fashions were “phat.” If the missed decade’s hip-hop apparel can be described with just a few brands and labels, Tommy Hilfiger earned a spot on that list alongside other companies who manufactured preppy cool that could be consumed by all classes of people who aspired to own a piece of the pie. The classic Hilfiger Americana logo paired with its iconic use of bright yellows, whites, greens and more flashy colors dominated as the go-to aesthetic for hip-hop kids during a great portion of the ’90s. In four years, Hilfiger sales went from $107 million in 1992 to nearly $500 million in 1996. They also earned a level of street cred throughout rappers sporting the gear and serving up shoutouts in rhymes, further co-signing their clothing.
Then came the rumor.
In 1997, during Tommy Hilfiger’s peak, a nasty allegation started making its way around the pre-social media days of the Internet. It claimed the designer appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and confessed that he hated black people and preferred his clothes be worn by “upper class white people.”
“If I’d known African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice,” Hilfiger allegedly said during his chat with Oprah. “I wish these people would *NOT* buy my clothes, as they are made for upper class white people.”
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Again, this was 1997 and YouTube wouldn’t be a thing for another eight years. Despite not having actually appeared on Oprah, the alleged interview quote quickly spread around like wildfire and despite valiant efforts to dispel it, embers from the “Tommy Hilfiger is racist!” email still burn 20 years later. It pops up on social media accounts whenever a black man or woman finds himself dead at the hands of a police officer, urging black people to #buyblack instead of supporting “racists” like Hilfiger. However, the rumor couldn’t be any more further from the truth.
“I thought it was nonsense, and that anyone who read it would know it was slander,” Hilfiger writes in his new autobiography, American Dreamer: My Life in Fashion and Business. “For one thing, I’d never said, thought, or felt anything remotely so repugnant. For another, I’d never appeared on Oprah. ‘If I just ignore this,’ I figured, ‘It’ll go away.’ The opposite happened.”
The rumor became bigger and more inclusive. Now, Hilfiger hated everyone who wasn’t middle-class, white and heterosexual. It wasn’t until the rumor spread to Hilfiger co-founder Joel Horowitz did the designer realize he had a major problem on his hands. “It hit me hardest when Joel came to me and said, ‘People at my synagogue are telling me…’”
Hilfiger says he sought the advice of mentor Leonard Lauder, son of Estee Lauder and chairman emirate of Estee Lauder Companies, INC, who advised he reach out to a professional. The clothier employed the services of Jules Kroll, inventor of the modern corporate investigations industry.
An investigation lead by Kroll’s company led to the urban legend originating back to a college campus in the Northwest. Unfortunately, they were unable to reach a definitive conclusion. Hilfiger then went to the FBI to get to the bottom of the rumor, but was shuffled around instead and given no real help. With talk of Tommy Hilfiger being a racist, homophobic anti-Semite affecting his reputation and the reputation of his company, Hilfiger fought back by seeking the services of top public relation companies. The American designer was ready to hit the spin-ground running, ready to squash the hurtful rumor dead in its tracks. But not so fast, PR had a different plan — no plan.
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“No, no, no. If you address it, you are going to make it worse. It’ll spread the word and sound like you’re guilty. Let it go,” Hilfiger explains his pricey PR advised him, a decision Hilfiger is still iffy about two decades later. “I took that advice, but I’m still not certain that was the right course of action. On a personal level, I still tell people every chance I get that it’s ridiculous and not true.”
Hilfiger willfully admits that the rumor and calls for a boycott did impact his bottom line, but not so much that it ruined the company. “The rumor cost us money, but it didn’t ruin our business,” he wrote. “In fact, between 1997 and 2000, sales continued to increase dramatically. It hurt my heart, though, and my integrity, because at the end of the day, that’s all you have.”
A decade following the now-urban legend, Hilfiger eventually did appear on Oprah in 2007. Interestingly enough, it was the daytime talk show queen who pitched the idea of having the designer debunk the rumor on her show. The two first met while Hilfiger was raising money for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington, D.C. “In the course of our conversation she also said, ‘By the way, you should really come on my show, because there is that stupid rumor that we should squash.’ I told her I would love to, but I really didn’t want it to look like this was a quid pro quo.” A chat with music legend Quincy Jones changed his mind.
“Tommy, Oprah will dispel that stupid bullshit. Do it,” Hilfiger recalls Quincy Jones telling him. And so the the designer appeared on the show.
“As I sat facing her,” Hilfiger details, “Oprah turned toward the audience and said, ‘I thought that this really horrible rumor had been laid to rest many, many years ago…. We’re setting the record straight once and for all.’ Sitting beside me, she asked, ‘In the twenty-one years that we’ve been on the air, have you ever been on the show?’ I said, ‘Unfortunately not. I’ve never been here before. As to the racist comments,’ I added, ‘I would never say that.'”
Oprah confirmed Hilfiger was a first-time guest and backed his story up. “I could not possibly have asked him to leave the set. So that is what I call in the category of a ‘BFL.’ That’s a big fat lie! That never happened!” the talk show host declared.
Even the Anti-Defamation League got involved. The civil rights/human relations agency did their own investigation and concluded that Hilfiger never made any of the racist, anti-Semitic remarks he had been accused of. The statement is still on their website.
Despite going from “$1 billion to $2 billion during that time,” as the designer claimed in a 2012 interview, the Tommy Hilfiger brand began to stumble.
By 2001, sales fell to a worrying $356 million. Analysts never factored in the rumor to Hilfiger’s decline, but the brand’s once-tight relationship with rap took a turn because of the damaging rumor. Factor in the emergence of urban brands like FUBU and Russell Simmons’ Phat Farm, plus Jay Z and Diddy getting into the clothing game with Rocawear and Sean John, respectively, and hip-hop artists were beginning to shy away from Tommy. And where the rappers went, the hip-hop kids followed.
Tommy Hilfiger never did connect with hip-hop again like it did in the ’90s, but given the decade’s popularity among kids today and OG rappers wanting to relive the old days, the need for vintage Tommy looks are at an all-time high. Hey, if Nautica is doing it, why not Tommy?
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