Tommy Hilfiger: Thoroughly Mod Tommy
By Godfrey Deeny
Photos by: Gruber-FWD
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NEW YORK, Feb 23, 2003/ FWD/ --- As one of the few people in Bryant Park Wednesday who has actually been a fervent Mod (albeit at the tender age of eight) back in the UK, it was gratifying to see Tommy Hilfiger use the youth movement as the backbone of his fall/winter 2003 collection.
Tommy thus joined Marc Jacobs in zeroing in on this golden age of gentle British rebellion as a theme for his fashion, though with a major difference. Where Jacobs' collection frequently descended into the absurd, Hilfiger's had hip wearability written all over it.
As an inspiration, the Mods are ideal in the current return to formality in men's clothes and humor in women's fashion. The Mod movement was a deliberate attempt by style conscious young men to ape yet subtly subvert the style of City Gents, while their dates broke the conformity of early '60s Britain by copying the style of emerging Paris designers like Andre Courreges.
Hilfiger's Yeah Yeah singer finale of Natalia, Liisa, Tiiu and Karolina in navy silk nylon, red packed wool and white neoprene was cool and fun, plus it echoed the house's label featuring prominently on the back wall of the long catwalk.
"It will feel new for a young guy or girl to put on a suit," said Hilfiger, explaining this move away from casual dressing.
His opening series of looks for men, vented chalk stripe suits, tailored Cromby coats and square-shouldered cashmere redingotes were cool and very commercial, especially as Tommy broadened the silhouette and lowered the buttons for the burlier American male.
He got the fabrics, and colors, just right for the ladies with short little patent leather jackets and pants, winter white faille coats and exaggerated black-and-white herringbone dresses. There was plenty of leg on display between the white retro futurist boots that stopped half way up the calf and short dance dresses. That made the collection sexy enough for the Hilton sisters, and classy enough for the young lady with whom they sat, Lauren Bush.
Not that Tommy was adverse to a wee bit of revisionism, to wit his claim, in the program notes, that Mod was pre-drugs. Pre-drugs? Now, we know that Lauren Bush of the "just say no" clan was sitting front row, but who are we kidding here. Onda even played The Who's classic Mod double "Quadrophenia" album, one of whose songs contains the immortal pill-popping line "Out of my head on the 5.15."
Like many Americans, Tommy says he first picked up on the Mods when the Beatles landed at JFK looking irreverent but cool. All I can do is share a cautionary tale: When I once told a major Who fan from East London that I was a Mod who dug The Fab Four from Liverpool, he snarled from the back of his Vespa, "The Beatles? They're not Mods, just ploughboys from up north!"
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