Hi, I'm Imran Ahmed and I'm pleased to share with you the Inside Fashion series where I interview

leading fashion designers from the fashion world. In this next inside fashion interview, I speak with

the American fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, going inside his American dream. But his dream wasn't

without its ups and downs. Tommy had lots of problems and challenges along the way in building his business.

And he was very open about sharing them with me, which makes this next conversation all the more valuable.

Just keep in mind this conversation was recorded for video purposes, so please do excuse any audio issues I wanted to spend

some time talking about your career it's been 30 years now since you launched

your business so let's go back yeah to Elmira New York where you grew up and

where you set up your first fashion business.

I was curious to hear about kind of what motivated a young man living in a small upstate New York town.

What motivated you to think that fashion or starting a fashion business, even even back then was the right path for you

I think it was by mistake in a way yeah because I had no idea that I would ever go into

the fashion business yeah I was too small to play on the basketball team school too small

and frail to play on the football team.

And in the mid to late 60s, I became obsessed with music.

The Beatles came to America, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Hendricks,

and all of the sort of supergroup groups of the time were very influential.

There was a fashion, music revolution taking place with Woodstock,

and I wanted to be very much a part of that scene.

So because I couldn't really play an instrument, I decided to look like a rock star. And I had long hair and wore bell bottoms

and cool clothes. And most of the students at my school were dressing in preppy clothes and very

normal sort of classics. But they all wanted to look like me because it was like, you know, sort of a

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