It’s no secret that New York Fashion Week had lost a little of its shine in recent years, but if this current spring/summer 2025 season is anything to go by, the bi-annual event has officially returned to form. Ralph Lauren kicked off proceedings with a star-studded Hamptons extravaganza, Alaïa swapped its Parisian home for the renowned Guggenheim museum, while everyone from Rihanna to First Lady Jill Biden has been spotted on the front row — all in just the first few days alone.
It was Tommy Hilfiger’s show, however, that saw the excitement level in the city reach fever pitch. ‘There’s been some criticism about New York Fashion Week for a while, and we wanted to put that to rest,’ the legendary American designer told ELLE UK. ‘It felt important to show here. New York City is our birthplace: it’s where we started the brand almost 40 years ago, and it’s where I’m from originally, so we wanted to come back home.’
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Sunday night’s show marked the brand’s second back on home turf following a years-long absence from the NYFW schedule. They certainly went big for the occasion, taking over a decommissioned Staten Island Ferry to showcase the new collection. The likes of Brooke Shields, Damson Idris, Stella Jones and Winnie Harlow hopped aboard the newly souped-up ship and took their pews on the original brown-wood benches, as models filed out in a typically Tommy take on nautical-inspired dressing.
‘We wanted to do a nautical theme, but of course when we do nautical, we do it preppy and sporty and with a collegiate feeling in mind,’ explained the designer. Think oversize varsity-style jumpers, blazers, shirts and tailoring, reimagined in window-pane plaids and sailor stripes, and styled with 2024-ready details like crop tops, baseball caps and woven flats.
The overall look was recognisably Tommy Hilfiger, but with a decidedly fresh, modern twist: ‘Rule number one is to keep the brand DNA intact, but also modernise,’ he said. ‘Modernise through shape, through fabric, through detail, through presenting each style in a new way, because it has to be fresh but it also has to be familiar.’
The coup de grâce, however, came at the end of the evening, when members of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan rose from their seats and put on a surprise show of their own, much to the audience’s delight. ‘They’re from Staten Island originally, so it made sense,’ explains the designer. ‘They haven’t really been performing live for a while, so it was exciting to be able to assemble the band together again and kind of bring them out of retirement.’
Wu Tang Clan performs at Tommy Hilfiger SS25 show
‘It’s all about fashion-tainment,’ Hilfiger explained of his show concept. ‘A show can either be very exciting or boring, and I like to make it exciting through mixing entertainment in with the experience. You have to walk away from a show thinking that it was a memorable experience and something that you have not seen in the past.’
Memorable it certainly was, and it sounds like the show was just the start of a full-scale immersion into the world of Tommy Hilfiger that the brand has planned for the future. ‘We’re really focused on building Tommy Hilfiger out to its fullest potential, which is building it out into a lifestyle brand,’ the designer said. ‘We want people to have Tommy Hilfiger in their homes, we want them to sleep on our sheets, wear our clothes and our jewellery, use our beauty products and fragrances, and just have a piece of every aspect of Tommy Hilfiger.’
Longtime fans can rest assured, however, that this new ‘lifestyle’ will still be affordable. ‘The brand has to be accessible,’ explains Hilfiger, ‘so while we’re really focused on increasing quality and elevating standards, we’re going to also be making sure that the pricing remains somewhat intact.’
‘If you see what’s going on with the luxury brands right now, there’s a lot of sticker shock,’ says Hilfiger. ‘People are looking at the pricing, and I think that they’re hesitating now, whereas there was a time when it almost didn’t matter. But when you’re looking at a cashmere sweater for, like, $6,000 in some cases, it just doesn’t make sense.’ Hear, hear.
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Clementina Jackson is Acting Site Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, working across news and features, trends, e-commerce and SEO. She was previously Fashion Editor at Cosmopolitan and Women’s Health, and Acting Digital Fashion Editor at ELLE UK, where she was named as a PPA 30 Under 30 award winner for her work on size inclusivity. An experienced fashion, travel and luxury lifestyle journalist, Clementina has also written for Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Condé Nast Traveller, Tatler, Red and Italy Segreta.