What Makes an Underdog? Inside Tommy Hilfiger's "F1® The Movie" Premiere
Did you know that there’s a cinema in Selfridges? I didn’t. But maybe I’m behind the curve. Behind, at least, compared to Tommy Hilfiger, who this week hosted a stellar premiere for F1® The Movie—starring Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, and the new APXGP Collection by Tommy Hilfiger—in London’s premier department store.
On arrival, it was clear that no expense had been spared: from at least 50 meters down the road a red carpet, along with a gaggle of very well-dressed people (decked out in Tommy of course), was hard to miss. Having strutted my way across said carpet (no one cared) and followed a brief snake down into the belly of Oxford Street, a dimly-lit scene revealed itself. Cursive neon signing, a slick bar, and a tuck shop doling out Tommy branded popcorn all signalled, in capital letters: we were at The Movies.
Artists and influencers washed about, nibbling on canapés or sharing intimate moments in diner-style booths. Among the guests were musicians Odeal and Ghetts, content creators Lola Clark and Lissie Mackintosh, and Tommy ambassador and race car driver Alba Larsen. Come 7pm, all of the above were filed into two of Selfridges’ plush screening rooms, settling in for 150 minutes of buttock clenching, F1 politics, and very fast cars.
Tommy Hilfiger was a quiet but prominent feature of the film from beginning to end. As a key sponsor to the fictional APXGP race team, its logo adorned the sides of Brad Pitt’s and Damson Idris’ regulationally shady (and often wrecked) F1 cars; we also saw Idris make appearances in the red quilted jacket from the real-life collection. The brand calls this a “synergy of speed and style,” and we’d be inclined to agree.
In the moments before the movie began, we managed to catch Odeal for a quick chat: about Tommy’s legacy, pit stop snacks, and what it means to embark on your career with an outsider’s chance of winning. “I started off as an underdog,” says the South London musician. “And I feel like I still am. It’s fun, like, when not everyone’s locked in. But then when people hear the music and really dig into the discography, I become a favorite.”
I can’t help but notice the red threads between Odeal’s journey, the movie we watch right after, and the trajectory of the Tommy brand itself. Consider the stories of how Tommy Hilfiger was a racing fan as a kid, how he’d duck under fences to get close to the smell of burning rubber and the drone of high-performance engines. Or of his initial forays into fashion, driving from his hometown in Elmira to pick up dozens of bell-bottom jeans and sell them for a profit back home. Like Odeal, like Joshua Pearce—everyone starts as an underdog.
These days, there’s no doubting Tommy’s favorite status. This capsule collection is testament to the brand’s pole position in popular culture, with its clothes showing up in huge-budget blockbusters and sported by the A-listers du jour. But the F1 movie is a reminder that sometimes the most interesting stories happen in those germinating phases, towards the back of the grid—a reminder to take stock of what made those favorites in the first place.
I like to think of Tommy’s involvement in F1® The Movie as a somewhat sentimental return to its underdog roots, packaged in an unapologetic, 300-million-dollar statement of its own fearsome success. In many ways, Tommy seems to be paralleling the laconic Sonny Hayes’ oft-repeated mantra, one which eschews logic or strategy and signals a return to a simpler, rawer mode of thinking: “drive fast.”
To get a piece of the action, check out The APXGP collection here.
