After receiving criticism, the designer explains that he was also upset to have the model walk his runway in the red poncho after his casting director deemed her not as thin as the other girls.
- Nov 3, 2016
AceShowbiz - Yes, there are people who think that Gigi Hadid's body isn't perfect. One of those happened to be a casting director who worked for Tommy Hilfiger and once had the 21-year-old model walk down the runway in a poncho during one of the designer's fashion shows in 2015.
Hilfiger himself made the revelation in an interview with Yahoo! Style. He said that Hadid had to wear the red poncho because the casting director had an issue with her figure. "Our casting director said, 'She doesn't really fit because you know she's not quite as tall as the other girls, she's not quite as thin,' " the fashion mogul recalled.
"So they put a red, white and blue poncho on her. It covered a lot of her body, unfortunately, but it received millions of hits," he continued. The success impressed Hilfiger, who then came up with an idea to work with Hadid again on a collaborative project now known as TOMMYxGIGI.
After the interview with Yahoo! Style was published, Hilfiger received so much criticism for insinuating that Hadid was fat. Responding to the backlash, he told Page Six that he was also upset that Hadid had to cover her body in that poncho.
"The casting people put Gigi in the poncho, and I was not happy. I was saying, 'Don't hide her body.' Even though the poncho ended up being the best-selling piece, I was very unhappy," he explained. "The suggestion that I thought she wasn't thin enough upsets me to no end."
Hilfiger went on calling Hadid, the face of his brand, "the epitome of perfection." He continued, "I am proud to have her as the face of my brand and proud to have her collaborate with me. There's no other girl like her in the entire fashion world - not only because of her beauty, but because of her style. We worked with her to design a line - designers don't usually let models design with them - she had a style we thought was incredible."
He also pointed out that he had Hadid wear a bikini during another fashion show in New York. "She opened and closed the show in the bikini, because she's our No. 1 model," he stated. "She would not be the Tommy girl if I didn't think she was perfection, the It girl of today, not just because of her face, not just because of her body, but because of who she is."
