Hilfiger Family Dynamics

Of the hundreds of ads in this month's Harper's Bazaar, the Tommy Hilfiger campaign above held my attention for longer than the usual 2 nanoseconds. Introduced last fall, "The Hilfigers" are a country club-going megafamily styled in the tradition of the (much cooler) Royal Tenenbaums:

And, as I did last fall, I tried to discern the various relationships within the family. Who are the Hilfiger children, and who are their mates and/or hangers-on? I puzzled over this for an embarrassing amount of time until it occurred to me that maybe a commercial existed on YouTube that might help me sort things out.

In fact, there were (at least) three. The first was created for T.H.'s fall collection, and it did not provide any real clues. The second aired around Christmas, and I remember seeing it once or twice on TV. In it, the family is having a wacky holiday meal.

 

Still, which ones were the true Hilfigers? I believe the new spring ad finally sheds some light on this mystery.

 

It is my belief that the ones spelling out H-I-L-F-I-G-E-R at the beginning are Hilfigers and everyone else is not. So I created the following chart.

The faces circled in red are the parents, obviously, and the faces circled in yellow, as suggested by the commercial, are their children. The arrows indicate romantic relationships (click photo to expand).

The two young people seen directly above Pa Hilfiger are employees having affairs with the parents, who are trapped in a loveless marriage ("Hilfigers do NOT get divored!"). Two red arrows indicate heterosexual involvement among the quartet, but it could just as easily have gone the other way. Pa H. certainly likes to show a lot of leg, doesn't he?

I wanted to think that the blonde on the left was a daughter, but the commercial says no, so Sneering Khaki Jacket is a son. Mom is drinking.

I'm going to assume that the Hilfigers adopted (unless...). The young woman in the white hat whose expression says "bish please!" is a gold digger and nowhere near good enough for their classy son. Note how chilly Ma H. has turned her back on this girl.

Not much to say about this trio, other than the fact that Hilfiger men can wear their hair any old way they want, and the commercials are trying very hard to make the little girl seem like Margot Tenenbaum.

And speaking as a high school teacher whose classroom was cruelly located in a junior high building, I think the boy above looks like he'd be completely unbearable.

In the bottom half of the ad, everything begins to fall apart.

OK, we know that the girl on the right and the boy on the far left are Hilfigers. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the girl is single. That's right, she's pulling a Kelly! She's forced to attend these country club family outings all by herself, sans significant other, and she will continue to do so until she is thirty-freaking-eight-years-old.

Exploding Afro Souffle and Dickish Card Player are college friends of Long-haired Son, and this trio's relationship is fluid and ambiguous at best. Ma and Pa Hilfiger keep trying to get Exploding Afro Souffle and Dickish Card Player to pay attention to Kelly, but for some reason they just don't seem all that interested.

The dogs are, of course, awesome.

And that is my breakdown of the Hilfiger family dynamics.

Honorable mention for making me pause while flipping through Bazaar goes to this Dolce & Gabbana ad:

...in which three classy brunettes gaze upon a yucky Ke$ha type with disdain.

Comments

[Melinda]

Those Hilfigers got nothing on the Redmond Family. Those kinky, robe-wearing freaks can't get enough and they don't give a damn.
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[Kelly]

[jawdrop] Even that cartoon bird looks terrified.

[Nik]

That post thoroughly entertained me, thank you!