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Here's a fashion brand that has an interesting identity crisis, new to India. By Amanpreet Singh Hilfiger-or is it 'hail figure'? Whatever it is, it's a fashion label new to India, and is likely to be watched very carefully for signs of brand character (fashion, after all, is supposed to be at the extreme end of the brand sensitivity spectrum). The funny thing is that this doesn't promise to be easy. For the simple-or rather, complex---reason that the label is thought to be suffering from an identity crisis of some acuteness in its home market, the United States. First, the basic facts. Tommy Hilfiger is the name of a designer of apparel. His designs are to be marketed in India by Arvind Murjani Brands (AMB), a joint venture between the Murjani and Lalbhai Groups. The Murjani family and Hilfiger go back a long way. Vijay Murjani, Managing Director of the Murjani Group, is also the son of Mohan Murjani, who played mentor to the designer in many respects. So when Murjani says he is "proud to be part of an experience as rare and unique as the launch of the first major designer brand in India", he is erasing Pierre Cardin from his scale of reckoning rather than memory, more likely. Anyhow, it was Hilfiger's 1979 trip to Mumbai that awakened him to the country's fashion potential---when the country would be ready for him. And ready, the country finally is, he feels. Of course, nothing too outrageous. Jeans and a few other wearables-such as sportswear, handbags and eyewear, going by the display at Hilfiger's inaurgual showroom at Delhi's swanky South Extension. Dressing, according to the designer, should be a "fun", a "creative way to express yourself". Nothing dramatic here either. Nor in his comments on his Spring' 04 Collection, presented to an audience in Delhi. "My collection is about good times," he beams, "It is about optimism. Every piece bursts with feel-good energy and colour. The look is fresh and exuberant." The audience would rather talk about Beyonce Knowles, and her endorsement of Hilfiger. And in that lies the story of a brand that has zigged and zagged in and out of customer mindspace in rather different parts of town. Tommy began with an American dream. In 1969, with his life savings of $150, he drove his 1959 Beetle to the Big Apple, New York City, to buy trendy bell bottom jeans that he couldn't get back home in Elmira, New York. He resold the jeans to local teens, and made enough money to open a store called People's Place, a hip store catering to the campus crowd of the 1970s. He turned designer himself, and hit big time. By 26, he owned ten specialty shops throughout upstate New York, and within a decade, the swish set wanted to be seen in his clothes. Hilfiger was a part of the snob set. The 1990s, though, drove Hilfiger to explore new territory, new ideas and new appeals. And the designer found himself enamoured---or so it is thought---of the hip-hop cross-currents of fashion. In no time, the increasingly vocal 'yo' crowd was into Hilfiger, and this was taken as a sign of the times under Clinton of 'multicultural America' fame. When Snoop Doggy Dog---yes, the infamous rapper with all sorts of charges against him---wore the blue, red and white Hilfiger Rugby shirt on 'Saturday Night Live', it made Tommy Hilfiger into a major statement of subaltern assertion. And it worked, too, as a wide-appeal brand, a statement of cross-socio-economic solidarity. Hilfiger was hailed as a fashion genius For a while, that is. By the end of the 1990s, Hilfiger was fabulously wealthy. But the saxophone-in-the-White-House period drew to a close, too, and within a couple of years, a lot had changed in America's clothing consciousness. In the most blunt telling of the story, the Hilfiger fabric ruptured---leaving the label with a severe crisis of identity. The brand had reached out way too much, said management analysts, and must return to the safer zones of upmarket snobbery---as in the 1980s---in appealing to the customer put off by hip-hop-related attitude dressing. It's either this, or that. According to some observers, Hilfiger took the advice---quietly, though, since it made him vulnerable to charges of target audience desertion and worse (remembered by an embarrassing episode on the Oprah Winfrey show that the designer couldn't quite live down). The only way to resolve the identity crisis, goes the reasoning, is to undo the 'dalliance' of cosy years and narrow the appeal to the more profitable segment of the audience. Other observers, who still admire what Hilfiger achieved by way of fashion sensibility convergence, see him as a designer with enough gall to just do what he's been up to, crisis or not. The designer, of course, has defended himself against what he sees as a 'malicious campaign' to rip him apart. So---just how does this identity crisis express itself in the Indian market context? Hilfiger has made no public statement on it, preferring to talk about energy, colour, freshness, exuberance and so on. Oh yes, another thing. The designer has spoken about counterfeit designer clothes, too. And he appears quite confident of upmarket India's brand sophistication. "Real stuff is real," he says, "People in India will go for the real thing."
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