SPARKLE & POP
Famed fashion designer and entrepreneur Tommy Hilfiger opens the doors to his Miami home, a bold family escape that owes its fun factor to an enviable collection of Pop Art.
When it came to redecorating their modernist Miami mansion, fashion designer couple Tommy Hilfiger and Dee Ocleppo Hilfiger let their wild art collection take centrestage — and the result is eye-popping.
“We wanted it to be really kind of crazy, like 1970s decadence,” the American design legend says with a laugh over the phone from Milan, where he has just presented his latest menswear collection with Formula One champion, Lewis Hamilton.
While Hilfiger’s fashion designs have long celebrated a preppy, all-American aesthetic, his private art collection has a distinctly edgier flavour. “When I first moved to New York, I met Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and I started loving the whole Pop Art thing,” Hilfiger recalls, adding that Warhol — with whom he frequented legendary club Studio 54 — offered to sell him pieces at a reduced rate. “But of course, at that time, I couldn’t really afford to buy the art, so when I started becoming more successful, I started investing in art and have always bought pieces that I absolutely loved.”
Hilfiger and Ocleppo Hilfiger’s remarkable Pop and post-Pop collection features works by Warhol, as well as fellow New York icons Basquiat and Keith Haring, and British artists Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin among others. The works remained mostly in storage, unsuited to the classic architecture of the couple’s homes in Connecticut and the island of Mustique, and a former home in Manhattan.
That was until they found their five-bedroom, seven-anda-half-bathroom modernist mansion on Miami’s exclusive Golden Beach, about 30 minutes north of the more boisterous, cocktail-fuelled South Beach.
After purchasing the home in 2013, the couple approached noted Los Angeles designer Martyn Lawrence Bullard, who had impressed them with his bold reinvention of the Beverly Hills home of close friends Elton John and David Furnish, showcasing their own impressive art collection.
While the trio brainstormed ideas in the early stages, Hilfiger says it was Ocleppo Hilfiger (a former model turned accessories designer and creative director) who ultimately took control of the project alongside Bullard. “I thought that was really cool, because I’m usually just too detail-oriented, so I thought ‘Let’s just let go a bit’,” recalls Hilfiger.
The couple’s art, Bullard says, “really set the mood of the house” and was the inspiration for the show-stopping living and dining rooms. Major collaborative works by Warhol and Basquiat established the entire colour palettes for both, with white walls creating a gallery-style backdrop, while the colours in the paintings are amplified in the upholstery and other textiles, including the Kyle Bunting rugs (in Bullard’s custom designs) that anchor both spaces. Most of the home’s furnishings are vintage, including original pieces or re-editions by Paul Evans, Vladimir Kagan, Willy Rizzo and De Sede.
Elsewhere, a series of Marilyn Monroe photographs by Bert Stern hangs in the main bedroom, an Andy Warhol silk-screen print of Mick Jagger has pride of place in a bathroom, while other Warhol wonders feature in the bedrooms — a Flowers work in a guestroom, and a Mickey Mouse print in one of the children’s rooms. In the breakfast area, Vik Muniz’s paean to Elizabeth Taylor is placed near a Willy Rizzo table with vintage Laverne chairs from JF Chen.
The vibrant collection is not limited to the home’s interior with a Keith Haring sculpture elevating the poolside terrace, a favoured family hangout, overlooking the bright azure waters of the Atlantic Ocean.
Another favourite place for the family to spend time together is the home’s lush, red cinema that Ocleppo Hilfiger decorated with a truly Studio 54-meets-Austin Powers zeal. “At night, we’re always watching movies together — that’s our favourite thing,” Hilfiger says. (Right now, Hilfiger says he’s obsessed with nature documentaries: “I love David Attenborough.”)
Aside from the Miami home, the couple own a sprawling estate in Connecticut (“best described as an English manor,” says Hilfiger) where they spend most of their time, given its close proximity to the designer’s New York office, and recently sold an apartment in New York’s famed Plaza Hotel overlooking Central Park.
But it is the Miami home, which Hilfiger describes as “a mini resort”, where the family spends important occasions such as Easter and Christmas. And with seven children between them, the pair wanted to make sure the mansion was as much a welcoming home as it is a place to enjoy their art.
“It is a family home — all of my children love coming here,” Hilfiger says. “But what’s beautiful about it is it’s right on the sand, and the sunsets are golden, and the sands are white. You step out of the house into the pool and onto the beach.”
Hilfiger, who sold his business in 2010 but remains the label’s principal designer, is still collecting but says the pieces in this house mark a special time in his life.
Pressed to name a favourite work, he settles on New Flame — the collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol that dominates the white, purple, and red living room. “The Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat artworks are special to me, but that one, in particular,” muses Hilfiger.
“I love their creativity and they were both very influential at a time in the 1980s, which was an exciting time for fashion, music, art and entertainment. Those are fond memories for me, and this house takes me back to that; I’m happiest when I’m here, when my whole family is here.” tommy.com; martynlawrencebullard.com
OPPOSITE PAGE in the breakfast area, Willy Rizzo table; Laverne chairs from JF Chen; 1960s Arredoluce pendant light from Guinevere Antiques; Ocleppo Hilfiger wears TommyxZendaya gown from Tommy Hilfiger, Armani shawl, Wendy Yue earrings, and Jimmy Choo shoes; Hilfiger wears shirt, suit, belt and glasses from Tommy Hilfiger.
“When I first moved to New York, I met Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat and I started loving the whole Pop Art thing... but of course, at that time, I couldn’t really afford to buy the art, so when I started becoming more successful, I started investing in art and have always bought pieces that I absolutely loved”
TOMMY HILFIGER