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Tommy Hilfiger’s Dyslexia: How It Became His Advantage

Tommy Hilfiger, dyslexic fashion designer, in a white shirt in a 2009 portrait
Photo: Tommy Hilfiger (Flickr), CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.

Tommy Hilfiger is one of the most famous names in fashion. He launched the clothing line that carries his name in 1985. It is known for preppy, classic American style.

He was born in 1951 in Elmira, New York, into a big family with eight brothers and sisters.

He was also a kid who could not read well and had no idea why.

School and the hard part

Hilfiger has said his grades at school were very poor. He did not know he was dyslexic, and nobody around him knew either.

So he came to his own answer. In a 2017 interview he put it like this:

“I really thought I was one of the dumb ones.”

Tommy Hilfiger, PBS NewsHour, 2017

He says his teachers thought the same. So did his father, who set a very high bar for him.

He kept it all to himself. He has told the Child Mind Institute that he was too embarrassed to talk to his teachers or his family about it.

When he found out

Hilfiger has said he did not realize he was dyslexic until later in life. He has not given an exact age in the interviews we found, so we will not guess one.

What we do know is that he went through all of school without an answer. He has said he felt like he was not going to succeed.

Reading is still work for him. Understood.org notes that he has to concentrate hard to read, even now.

Tommy Hilfiger’s dyslexic advantage

Hilfiger does not say dyslexia made things easy. He says it pushed him to look for another way.

  • It got him moving early. He has said that feeling like he would not succeed at school made him think about what else he could do. At 17 he decided he should be in business.
  • He started small and just did it. He and some friends put together about $150 from part-time jobs. They bought 20 pairs of jeans and opened a shop when he was 18. A review of his memoir says the shop was in a basement, and that it did well.
  • He thinks differently. Understood.org says he puts much of his success down to the way he thinks, which he ties partly to dyslexia. He credits his creative mind with helping him stand out from other brands.
  • He is a dreamer. His memoir is called American Dreamer. Kirkus Reviews says dyslexia was one of the things that made him a dreamer from a young age.

He never went to college. He went from that first shop to designing his own clothing lines, and then to a brand known around the world.

He has one piece of advice for kids going through the same thing. If something is hard, tell an adult and let them help. It is the thing he did not do himself.

What we take from it

We think a lot of dyslexic people will know that “dumb ones” feeling. Hilfiger was wrong about himself, and so were the adults around him. We are glad he bought the jeans anyway.

Sources