Uploaded September 2017 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
5) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Hello Tommy! Nice to be with you today. Thank you for sitting down with me in the Business of Fashion. I want to spend some time talking about your career. It's been 30 years now since you ____________ your business. So let's go back to Elmira, New York where you grew up and where you set up your first fashion business. I was curious to hear about kind of what motivated a young man living in a small upstate New York town, what motivated you to think that fashion or starting a fashion business even back then was the right ____________ for you.
I think it was by mistake in a way. Because I had no idea that I would ever go into the fashion business. I was too small to play on the basketball team school, too small and ______ to play on the football team and in the mid to late 60s I became __________ with music. The Beatles came to America, the Rolling Stones, the WHO, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and all of the sorts of super groups of that time were very influential. There was a fashion music revolution taking place with Woodstock and I wanted to be very much a part of that __________. So because I couldn't really play an instrument I decided to look like a rock star and I had long hair and wore cool clothes and most of the students at my school were dressing in _______ clothes and very normal sort of classics but they all wanted to look like me, because it was like you know sort of a rebellion against parents. Because the parents hated long hair, they hated seeing like mod hippy type clothing on their children. And at that time I decided to take $150 I had saved from working nights in a gas station, buy 20 pairs of jeans from the streets of New York City bell-bottom jeans and sell them to my friends. So I opened a shop called People's Place, painted it black and played music, burned ________________ and candles and sold cool really cool clothes.
But this is like way before the internet and way before kind of mass media. I mean how did you? Because I've never been to Elmira obviously but like how did you kind of figure out what was
cool and like translate that into this this ________________ store?
it was all about what the musicians were wearing. That was cool. Seeing Jimi Hendrix and seeing the Stones and the Beatles and the WHO and all of these groups dressed in such
incredible ways, I really wanted to be part of that whole world. So I wanted to ____________ that type of clothing in my stores. So I searched New York City for the type of clothing I needed to put in my stores and I would go to like obscure boutiques and the Lower East Side and before Soho was Soho and the East Village and I would find really cool items, sometimes ________________ items and bring them back up to Elmira New York, which was college town, and I sold them to like cool young people. But along the way I was thinking, “Wait I think if I were to add a pocket or ________________ these jeans or change the design, I would have a better product.” So I started designing on my own and having these items made for my store and then stores subsequently. People loved what I was doing and while I was doing that it was it was so much fun. I thought, designing clothes is something that that I‘ve never thought of.
You were trained as a fashion.
No, not at all.
How did you? How did you teach yourself basically? How to design and kind of put together a garment and there's a lot of technical, you know skill that goes into designing?
I knew coming up with the ideas. It was inspiring, it was interesting. So I ______________ local people to work for me and I guided them and as I was doing that I was thinking, ”I should go my own brand”, and it was my dream at that time in the 70s to build my own brand but I didn't really know exactly how to do it and at one point in time is, I'm just doing. So I moved to New York City I sold my stores
That way before you get into that, there was that the stores grew very quickly.
5) Fill in the blanks based on what you listen:
Hello Tommy! Nice to be with you today. Thank you for sitting down with me in the Business of Fashion. I want to spend some time talking about your career. It's been 30 years now since you ____________ your business. So let's go back to Elmira, New York where you grew up and where you set up your first fashion business. I was curious to hear about kind of what motivated a young man living in a small upstate New York town, what motivated you to think that fashion or starting a fashion business even back then was the right ____________ for you.
I think it was by mistake in a way. Because I had no idea that I would ever go into the fashion business. I was too small to play on the basketball team school, too small and ______ to play on the football team and in the mid to late 60s I became __________ with music. The Beatles came to America, the Rolling Stones, the WHO, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix and all of the sorts of super groups of that time were very influential. There was a fashion music revolution taking place with Woodstock and I wanted to be very much a part of that __________. So because I couldn't really play an instrument I decided to look like a rock star and I had long hair and wore cool clothes and most of the students at my school were dressing in _______ clothes and very normal sort of classics but they all wanted to look like me, because it was like you know sort of a rebellion against parents. Because the parents hated long hair, they hated seeing like mod hippy type clothing on their children. And at that time I decided to take $150 I had saved from working nights in a gas station, buy 20 pairs of jeans from the streets of New York City bell-bottom jeans and sell them to my friends. So I opened a shop called People's Place, painted it black and played music, burned ________________ and candles and sold cool really cool clothes.
But this is like way before the internet and way before kind of mass media. I mean how did you? Because I've never been to Elmira obviously but like how did you kind of figure out what was
cool and like translate that into this this ________________ store?
it was all about what the musicians were wearing. That was cool. Seeing Jimi Hendrix and seeing the Stones and the Beatles and the WHO and all of these groups dressed in such
incredible ways, I really wanted to be part of that whole world. So I wanted to ____________ that type of clothing in my stores. So I searched New York City for the type of clothing I needed to put in my stores and I would go to like obscure boutiques and the Lower East Side and before Soho was Soho and the East Village and I would find really cool items, sometimes ________________ items and bring them back up to Elmira New York, which was college town, and I sold them to like cool young people. But along the way I was thinking, “Wait I think if I were to add a pocket or ________________ these jeans or change the design, I would have a better product.” So I started designing on my own and having these items made for my store and then stores subsequently. People loved what I was doing and while I was doing that it was it was so much fun. I thought, designing clothes is something that that I‘ve never thought of.
You were trained as a fashion.
No, not at all.
How did you? How did you teach yourself basically? How to design and kind of put together a garment and there's a lot of technical, you know skill that goes into designing?
I knew coming up with the ideas. It was inspiring, it was interesting. So I ______________ local people to work for me and I guided them and as I was doing that I was thinking, ”I should go my own brand”, and it was my dream at that time in the 70s to build my own brand but I didn't really know exactly how to do it and at one point in time is, I'm just doing. So I moved to New York City I sold my stores
That way before you get into that, there was that the stores grew very quickly.
