Tommy Bahama Marks 30 Years of the Sprinkle-of-sand Lifestyle Brand
The rooftop of the new high-rise Summit building in downtown Seattle will heat up Wednesday afternoon with the imagined island lifestyle that’s been powering local brand Tommy Bahama for 30 years.
Four hundred guests will attend the spring 2024 show, where models will walk the runway in tropical print bikinis, shirts and seersucker suits. Yes, there will be Beach Boys on the soundtrack, as well as Beyoncé, and cocktails will be served — grapefruit basil martinis, which will be the featured drink at the new Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa opening later this year in Indian Wells, California.
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An unlikely product of the Pacific Northwest, Tommy Bahama was founded in 1992 by Bob Emfield and Tony Margolis, two garment business veterans who met in Seattle in the ’70s, when they were sales reps for Brittania Sportswear Ltd. The company is named after a character they invented after buying houses on Florida’s Gulf Coast, where they dreamed of living life as one long weekend.
Now owned by Oxford Industries, Tommy Bahama — which delivered top-line growth of 5 percent in the first quarter — has become a lifestyle empire that extends from coast to coast and now includes clothing and licensed accessories, home products such as rugs, bedding and upholstered furniture, restaurants — and soon, a hotel.
There’s a unified vision for it all.
For spring 2024, St. Barths was the seasonal inspiration for the 60-member design team based in Seattle, who travel to vacation locations for research trips. On the mood board are photos of the island’s red roofs, sunshine yellow mini Mokes, leafy patios and deep blue infinity pools.
“When I first started, the men’s, women’s and accessories teams didn’t really connect very much on the beginning of the season, and they all looked very different. So we started creating a seasonal destination,” explained Executive Vice President of Product Design and Development Bradley O’Brien, who joined in 2014 after a decade at Ralph Lauren, four years at Old Navy, six at Lands’ End and four at Sperry Top-Sider. “We look at everything, from the architecture to the culture to the food and the artisans. We get a lot of inspiration from handicrafts, and flora and fauna of the particular area. We take lots and lots of photos and pull together concepts for the art department that really influences the color and the prints.”
The men’s and women’s collection will feature lots of novelty dresses, including a new Johnny Collar style; linen suiting; seersucker tops, skorts, bombers and blazers; swimwear, and stretch denim with sun protection. (Tommy Bahama has seals of approval from the Skin Cancer Foundation, and has raised more than $500,000 for the organization in its stores.)
“The great part about a runway is it’s not necessarily the real way, and so you can put things out there and style them in a way that makes people think, ‘Oh, I never thought of that.’ Like pairing a linen suit with a bikini,” she said.
The brand’s customer demographic is age 35 to 60, with the sweet spot in their 40s and 50s, and the women’s business is now growing faster than men’s. As a percentage of sales over the last five years, women’s has grown 53 percent, while men’s has grown 22 percent.
Dresses and knits are the two biggest categories and, surprisingly, women’s suiting is not far behind. ‘We’ve always done linen suiting for men and we can’t even keep it in stock now. There’s definitely a trend happening in women’s as well all around the blazer and the suit. So this is the first time that we’ll be offering really great suiting for her as well.”
Performancewear under the Island Zone franchise has also been key to the brand’s success, and the spring 2024 collection is taking inspiration from “court and course,” with clothing that can be worn from the golf course to the pickleball court.
“The fabrics keep you dry, they stretch, they’ve got great details, pockets and things that help you stay active,” said O’Brien, adding that the Palm Coast Polo is a top seller.
The brand has also hit with a woven fabric that’s perforated, used for camp shirts. “It looks like a silk camp shirt but it performs really well, is super lightweight and stretches and keeps you dry. It’s been so popular, we’re introducing it for women. That’s what’s fun about being a dual gender brand.”
Spring will also mark the debut of a performance seersucker fabric, alongside a traditional woven one, leaning into fashion’s return to prep and the old money trend.
“We absolutely look at the runway in the beginning of the season, and scour through some of the shows of the tried and true brands. Then we put it through the Tommy Bahama filters.…Our guest is not about fast fashion but wants to be relevant. And so if puff sleeves are definitely trending, we might put a puff sleeve on something that we already know she knows and loves in a fabrication that she already has in her closet to get her to buy into a new version.”
What are the Tommy Bahama filters?
“We talk about quality, artistry and craftsmanship, and especially in the imagery, we always want to show up looking like sun and sea and sky and sand. And then when it comes down to the product itself, it has to be effortless. Sometimes things will have one or two details too many.…You just want to be able to throw something on and feel super comfortable and relaxed,” O’Brien said. “And then the last thing that we say is we always want to have ‘a sprinkle of sand.’ It’s just a cute detail that makes the customer smile.”
For some fresh inspiration, the brand has partnered with the New York-based nonprofit Fashion Scholarship Fund on a design contest, and on Wednesday will award three students whose work will be included in the 2024 Tommy Bahama Artist Series.
“They’ll be representing their artwork and will have their apparel on mannequins, and everybody will be able to meet them and understand the inspiration,” O’Brien said. “Coming from the East Coast, and having a career at brands that are household names, I wanted Tommy Bahama to be a household name. And what better way than to gain awareness and recognition with these students? We just launched an internship program as well…so the talent of tomorrow wants to come and work here, too.”
One of the female executive’s proudest achievements has been elevating Tommy Bahama’s women’s profile. “It’s nice to see the perception is shifting,” said O’Brien, who favors the brand’s dresses, jeans and flirty tops for work. “And when you’re in stores, you also see families coming in. So it’s definitely a brand the entire family engages with.”
That’s thanks also to the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bars, which debuted way ahead of the latest wave of fashion-fronted restaurants like the Polo Bar and Tiffany Blue Box Café. Three more Marlin Bars are opening on the horizon.
“We do see that the stores that are attached to those, the sales are really, really strong in those doors. So the guest likes to come in and enjoy being a part of the brand and then shop it as well,” she said. (The brand operates 13 restaurant and bar locations and nine Marlin Bars.)
Soon they can also be able to live it at the Tommy Bahama Miramonte Resort & Spa, opening in November outside of Palm Springs, California, with 215 rooms, three pools, and a 12,000-square-foot spa.
“That’s going to be a big moment,” O’Brien said. “I was lucky enough to work with our home wallpaper and fabric licensee to help pick out all the fabrics and wallpapers for each of the suites and the rooms. And we are going to have our artists go down and create signature murals for them.”
The hotel property will feature a 1,200-square-foot retail store, even though it’s within miles of Tommy Bahama stores in both Palm Springs and Palm Desert. O’Brien said, “We’re thinking of it more as a lab, where we can test elevated product.”
Tommy for the big 4.0.
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