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Daily Inspiration Quote by Tommy Hilfiger

"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

Hilfiger’s confidence isn’t born from genius lightning bolts; it’s born from a cold look across the aisle. The line reads like a pep talk, but the engine underneath is more pragmatic: fashion as an industry of permission, where success often comes from recognizing that the gatekeepers are not gods, just people with distribution, timing, and a story that’s landing.

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

TopicEntrepreneur
SourceHelp us find the source
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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.

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If They Could Do It, I Could Compete - Tommy Hilfiger
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About the Author

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Tommy Hilfiger (born March 24, 1951) is a Designer from USA.

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