"$149.99 for a pair of jeans?" I gasped.
  "They're Tommy's", my shopping-wise 13 year old daughter informed me. "They're cool."
  Apparently lots of her friends wear these and other overpriced items sporting the Tommy Hilfiger logo. But why do parents and teens buy Tommy jeans that cost three or four times more than regular ones?
 

Hilfiger manufactures cool by paying pop star like Britney Spears and Jewel to wear their clothes. TV is Tommyland too

  It's all about cool, I learned.
  Kids like to feel they're cool, and be seen to be cool. But since cool is so amorphous and so fleeting, anything that's recognizably cool, can command outrageous prices.
 

Cartoon by Don Monet. Visit Don's website at www.magi.com/ ~dmonet/ cartoon-of-the-day

  And so Hilfiger manufactures cool by paying cool pop stars like Britney Spears and Jewel to wear their clothes -- and much more. They sponsor their tours. They get them to do Tommy ads, to sign autographs at stores, to go to cool celeb parties featuring Tommy. And they make sure there's lots of coverage of these "events" in the media.
  Even the Rolling Stones were 'Tommyed' last year - their entire tour, plus ads, commercials, the use of their songs. So was Lenny Kravitz. Even the vaunted, independent and ultra cool Lilith Fair was plastered with the logo of this billion-dollar maker of clothes, footwear and cosmetics.
 
  Hilfiger got its start turning musicians into models of their clothes back in the early 1990s when it began sponsoring and promoting unknown rappers and their baggy clothes. Today the company is creating its own Tommy pop star, the soon-to-be-cool Michael Fredo, discovered and marketed by Hilfiger.
 

What's a parent to do? Try to get kids to understand that lame stuff like Hoola-hoops and Hawaiian shirts used to be ultra-cool. Decent self-esteem helps as well.

  "We use both people who are established and we launch new people too," Andy Hilfiger, brother of Tommy and VP of public relations, said last summer.
  Fredo, naturally, will open for Britney Spears on her upcoming tour.
  Hilfiger has also infiltrated the movie industry by dressing the entire cast of The Faculty in Tommy Jeans. Four-page pull-out ads in leading teen magazines feature the cast lounging about the set in Hilfiger clothes. There are also TV spots based on the same set of images.
  And when they can't buy top movie stars, they rent the sons and daughters of stars, put them on tour in cool fashion shows, cool parties and cool concerts.
  TV is Tommyland too. Shows that teens are likely to watch, like Time of Your Life starring cool Jennifer Love Hewitt, are exclusively dressed by Hilfiger. It's just one of a dozen shows--including Friends, ER, Now and Again, Third Watch, West Wing, and Dharma and Greg--where the actors are paid to wear only what Tommy makes. On some shows, only the young, cool actors like West Wing's Rob Lowe are 'Tommyed'.
  It's hard to know where the advertising ends and the entertainment begins. Hilfiger isn't the only one blurring the lines, just the most successful and inventive in finding ways to make kids believe they'll be cool if they hand over large sums of cash for their products. Monster jeans-maker Levi Strauss & Co think Tommy's on to something and started producing a string of major concert tours last year hoping to hang some music cool onto its clothes. Expect to see a lot more of this in the future. Jean makers may soon be the real power in the music business.
  Cool, eh?
  So what's a parent to do?
  Keeping kids out of this merchandising of cool trap isn't easy. Teens are usually feeling insecure deep down, so getting a lock on cool is a pretty powerful force to deal with. It helps if kids already appreciate that prices on most things are not tied to any real value but on what marketers think suckers will pay.
  Decent self esteem helps as well. Help them learn that being cool is about who you are not what you wear.
  Try and get them to understand that lame stuff like hoola hoops and Hawaiian shirts were once ultra cool too. Recently the mighty Tommy has lost some of its cool cache as the 8 to 12 year old set are now nagging their parents for $149.99 jeans.
  After all teens wearing the same clothes as sixth graders would be totally uncool.