Tommy Hilfiger

Tommy Hilfiger is an American fashion brand founded in New York City in 1985 by the designer Tommy Hilfiger, and since 2010 it has belonged to PVH Corp., the group that also owns Calvin Klein. Its headquarters are now in Amsterdam. The company is known for red, white and navy preppy sportswear, and it added women's intimate apparel to its range in 2001. Underwear, bras and loungewear carrying the flag logo are the reason the brand appears in this encyclopedia.

A shop in Elmira

The story starts well before 1985. Thomas Hilfiger was born in 1951 in Elmira, in upstate New York, the second of nine children. In 1971 he opened a store called People's Place in downtown Elmira with $150 of savings. It sold jeans and counterculture clothing, and it ran a hair salon, a record shop and rock concerts in the basement. The shop expanded, overreached and went bankrupt in 1977. Hilfiger moved into design work in New York.

The 1985 launch and the Times Square billboard

The Tommy Hilfiger company was founded in 1985 with backing from the Indian textile businessman Mohan Murjani. Hilfiger described the idea as the "prep school look, traditional Ivy League" with a more laid-back attitude: button-down shirts, chinos and rugby tops cut a little looser and colored a little brighter than the originals.

The launch is remembered mainly for its advertising. The adman George Lois designed a large billboard in Times Square that set the unknown designer's name beside the names of the most famous American designers of the day, a deliberately cheeky move that made him a talking point before most people had seen the clothes. In 1989 Silas Chou took over as the main financial backer, and the company grew through the 1990s into one of the largest American sportswear names.

Tommy Hilfiger underwear and intimates

Like most big American designer brands, Tommy Hilfiger expanded by putting its name on new categories. A bed and bath line arrived in 1998. Women's intimate apparel followed in 2001, at a time when designer underwear had become one of the most profitable corners of the fashion business. The model was obvious: Calvin Klein had shown in the 1980s and 1990s that a logo on an elastic waistband could sell in vast numbers, and a branded bra or brief costs far less than a jacket while carrying the same name.

The Tommy Hilfiger version leans on the brand's sports heritage. In general the look is the logo waistband, the cotton-stretch bralette, the hipster brief and coordinated lounge pieces, the athletic underwear style rather than lace lingerie. It sits in the same part of the market as the Calvin Klein Underwear range that shares its owner.

Apax, PVH and the move to Amsterdam

Ownership changed twice in five years. In 2006 the private equity firm Apax Partners bought Tommy Hilfiger for about $1.6 billion. In March 2010 PVH Corp., then still known as Phillips-Van Heusen, bought it from Apax for about $3 billion. PVH kept Hilfiger on as principal designer and installed the group's European operation in Amsterdam, which became the brand's headquarters.

PVH has since become one of the largest underwear owners in the world. In February 2013 it bought Warnaco Group, which held the Calvin Klein underwear business and the Warner's and Olga intimate apparel labels. Ten years later, in November 2023, PVH sold Warner's, Olga and True & Co. to Basic Resources, narrowing its intimates focus to its two big designer names. Tommy Hilfiger underwear now sits next to Calvin Klein inside a company that has deliberately stepped back from the department-store bra brands.

Scale

Tommy Hilfiger merchandise is sold through more than 2,000 free-standing stores in about 100 countries, plus department stores and online, with flagship stores in cities including New York, Paris, London and Tokyo. Underwear is a small part of that total, but it is the kind of entry-price product that brings new buyers to a designer label.

Year	Event
1971	People's Place opens in Elmira, New York
1985	Tommy Hilfiger company founded in New York City
1998	Bed and bath line launched
2001	Women's intimate apparel introduced
2006	Apax Partners buys the company
2010	PVH Corp. buys Tommy Hilfiger for about $3 billion
2013	PVH buys Warnaco, owner of Calvin Klein underwear

For a lingerie historian, Tommy Hilfiger is a clear case of the logo-waistband era: a sportswear brand whose underwear sells the flag more than the fabric, now owned by the same group that sells the most famous waistband of all.

Last updated October 7, 2026