"I looked at my competitors and I thought that, If they could do it, I could do it. And if, they are popular and doing well, I could compete with them"
About this Quote
The intent is disarmingly simple: demystify competition. By framing rivals as proof-of-concept, he flips envy into a business plan. “If they could do it” is a quiet refusal of the myth that taste is innate and unreachable. It’s also a subtle admission that popularity matters. Hilfiger doesn’t pretend he’s above the market; he’s explicitly watching who’s “popular and doing well,” treating cultural heat as a metric, not a moral compromise. In fashion, that’s honesty.
The subtext is class mobility with a mood board. Hilfiger’s brand rose by packaging aspiration into something legible and purchasable, and this quote mirrors that democratizing impulse: the ladder exists, so climb it. The repetition of “I could do it” isn’t poetic so much as iterative, like a pitch refined in real time. It also hints at the 80s and 90s American runway-to-mall ecosystem, when competing meant mastering branding, celebrity adjacency, and mass appeal as much as design.
What makes it work is its bluntness: ambition without mysticism, competition without romance. It’s the mindset of a designer who understood that culture isn’t only made; it’s entered, contested, and won.
Quote Details
| Topic | Entrepreneur |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hilfiger, Tommy. (2026, January 17). I looked at my competitors and I thought that, If they could do it, I could do it. And if, they are popular and doing well, I could compete with them. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-looked-at-my-competitors-and-i-thought-that-if-24362/
Chicago Style
Hilfiger, Tommy. "I looked at my competitors and I thought that, If they could do it, I could do it. And if, they are popular and doing well, I could compete with them." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-looked-at-my-competitors-and-i-thought-that-if-24362/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I looked at my competitors and I thought that, If they could do it, I could do it. And if, they are popular and doing well, I could compete with them." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-looked-at-my-competitors-and-i-thought-that-if-24362/. Accessed 19 Feb. 2026.






