[ad_1]
It has turn into widespread, for the reason that explosion of Netflix’s Method 1 docuseries Drive to Survive, for trend manufacturers to staff up with racing groups. It makes loads of sense: excessive speeds, increased glamor, and good-looking drivers, more and more changing into trend plates themselves.
F1’s trend potential, although, is nothing new to Tommy Hilfiger. The legendary American designer first encountered the game as a younger fan, hopping the fence at the US Grand Prix, held not removed from his childhood residence in New York, to ask groups for spare uniforms. As soon as he was operating his personal label, he was fast to arrange preparations with main F1 groups—first Lotus, after which Ferrari.
Today, he is nonetheless an enormous fan—and nonetheless deeply concerned within the sport: Tommy Hilfiger (the model) serves because the clothes companion for Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes staff, with each events debuting a new collaboration with buzzy brand Awake NY forward of this weekend’s race-slash-party in Miami. We hopped on the cellphone with Hilfiger to find out about his surprisingly deep historical past with the game.
GQ: Do you keep in mind the primary race you watched?
Tommy Hilfiger: Nicely, I grew up in Elmira, New York, and Watkins Glen racetrack was a half-hour away from my residence, and that’s the place the American Grand Prix was within the ’60s and ’70s. So we’d go to the races, and after the races we’d soar the fence and go into the pits as a result of we wished to see the vehicles and meet the drivers. And what struck me at the moment—and this was within the late ’60s, once I was an adolescent—was not solely the vitality and the sound, however that there have been individuals from everywhere in the world, and they’d camp out. They might deliver campers and tents and other people can be partying, and there can be musical teams and bonfires and all types of issues happening. However what actually struck me on the time was the truth that these drivers had the good uniforms. I beloved the authenticity of the totally different sponsor’s logos on the uniforms. So we negotiated with the John Participant Particular staff to get some uniforms, and we wore them as trend items. They have been very exhausting to get, and I feel we nonetheless have one in our archives someplace.
Clearly Method 1 has seen an enormous increase within the States over the past couple of years. How did your pals or your friends speak about it then? Was this kind of a wierd factor to be involved in or was it one thing that you simply felt that a number of individuals round you cared about?
Nicely, in upstate New York, everybody was obsessive about it. As a result of it was a type of leisure that solely occurred yearly. And it was when Niki Lauda and a few of the OGs have been drivers and superstars. However then fast-forward to the ’80s, after I began my model, my companion, Lawrence Stroll, who now owns Aston Martin and oversees the Aston Martin staff, launched me to Staff Lotus, an English staff competing, they usually wanted a clothes sponsor. So we turned the clothes sponsor, and we dressed the staff. We created these actually cool uniforms. We went to the races. We had an enormous emblem on the automotive and it kind of reintroduced me to the game. We have been going to races in Monte Carlo and Manza and Montreal, and extra unique locations than Watkins Glen. And a few years later, the Ferrari staff thought they wanted an attire companion So we met the powers that be at Ferrari, and designed all of the uniforms for the pit crew, for the drivers, for the touring staff. We had very cool placement of our logos on the automotive, on the rear view mirrors. And Michael Schumacher, the primary driver on the planet on the time, was the motive force.
[ad_2]
Source link