Tommy Hilfiger Sold To Phillips-Van Heusen For $3 Billion

As reported by brandchannel, the famous fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger was recently rumored to be up for sale, and the likely buyer was rumored to be Phillips-Van Heusen.

Well it's official. Yesterday Phillips-Van Heusen, which already owns such brands as Arrow, Calvin Klein, and Izod, indeed announced it was acquiring the eponymous Tommy Hilfiger brand for about $3 billion in cash and stock.

Emanuel Chirico, Phillips-Van Heusen's chief executive, says this is "a unique opportunity to bring together two premier companies, each with iconic brands." The move also gives the company access to bigger distribution of its brands in Europe, since over half of Hilfiger's business is Europe-based.

Major management changes are not anticipated, and that means Tommy Hilfiger himself will likely continue to be the brand's principal designer and public face.

Still, it is perhaps a little sad to see the fashion industry, largely pioneered by individual designers like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, become a business of conglomerates. One has to wonder if a brand built around a designer can retain its unique personality when it becomes just one fish in a multi-brand pond.