To save time - # 2 J.Crew
#3 Abercrombie and Fitch
#4 Gap

I've actually owned a single item from each of these brands, my favourite being a kind of khaki shooting jacket my late father bought back from the US probably in the 1990s.  I didn't wear it for long, though.  This was from The Gap.  Can't remember where it was made.
A&F did reasonable chinos.  Crew - are they thought of as 'Preppie' rather than 'Ivy'?

Once upon a time, I think it was up there with RL as a name to keep an eye out for. These days I just think of it as being another name on the high-street (along with RL for the most part).

I’ll stand up for Tommy (shirts) I think I just did on another thread!

Firstly, but not most importantly, the logo is a lot more palatable than RL’s.

The 5/6 I have all have a decent three finger collar. A couple have a half decent roll.

All are a good full cut and are different enough colour ways. A yellow and a purple gingham, green candies etc. 

They’re not high end shirts. They’re fine. I wouldn’t have paid any more than a tenner for any of them.

Their shops are soulless, uninspiring places for people who want a logo’d baseball cap or swim shorts. But they must be doing something right to even have a presence on the high st. So fair play to them for that.

Crew do good polo shirts if you don’t mind the logo. I wouldn’t wear anything else particularly, but if I tried some chinos and they ticked enough boxes I might. Preppy? Yes probably. Their advertising always puts me in mind of a budget nineties RL.

This stuff does pop up in unexpected places.

I like to get out on my own. But don’t like the countryside, coffee shops, or sitting around in pubs on my own in the afternoon. So invariably I just mooch around local towns.

I’ve had stuff from Next (shoes used to all be Spanish leather), Zara (off white jeans, cashmere knitwear) M&S (knitwear) and Gap khakis in their day. Nothing incredible or that hits every detail. But it does tick enough boxes. Rise, taper. Three finger bd collars.

I’ve been banned from several shops for molesting their shirts.

A Gant shirt all too often looks, well, phoney: trying to sell some shtick but for some reason completely incapable of pulling it off.  So why bother trying?  Why not simply go on flogging the odd grey 'arrington to OAPs?  I bought a Madras last year: complete crap.  Won't make that mistake again.  Also a navy poplin.  Terrible, although a cheap charity shop purchase.  But - and here's the rub - several Brooks and Baggie shirts I picked up turned out to be just as bad.  Not worse, but just as bad.  A bit of trial and error going on, even now.

When TH launched his full range in the mid Eighties it was backed with an extensive ad budget. The ads used the names  of previous big US designers and positioned him as the next in line. The business was also managed by some ex-Ralph people who knew their stuff.

I remember hunting it down towards the end of the Eighties on a visit to New York and being pretty unimpressed by the quality. In all fairness you've got to remember that Polo at this time was superb. Great designs, materials and construction - although they still used a huge variety of sources for manufacturing.

In the nineties as an extension of all the stuff he was doing around music he really wooed the African American market and was popular with the hip hop crowd. It moved the brand in a more sportswear direction. I admired this greatly although the baggy jeans and massive logo sweatshirts were never something I would wear.

I always felt that he looked at what Ralph had achieved and followed his marketing led approach. Take for example, the campaign he ran about ten years ago. Using The Hifigers as a family that looked similar to The Royal Tenenbaums. Although ad heavy the concept showed nice variations on madras, seersucker and corduroy.

I now see TH at outlet malls when I'm in Florida. I don't rate it compared to either the Brooks or Polo stuff at the same outlets.

Perhaps they should have marketed themselves as 'Thomas Hilfiger Esq.' and gone for the faux-Anglo 'heritage', Changing Of The Guard mixed with Yalie chutzpah angle.  'Tommy' sounds far too proletarian - like 'arry.  As Hancock once said to Jack Hawkins, 'You sound like a scrap metal dealer'.  Too late to do anything about it now but I was wryly amused that my wife's nephew should have thought it 'high end' when working in what was once a premier men's outfitters.  (I ended up buying only Falke socks from them - and they didn't last the distance).  I recall meandering in, wearing Troy Guild, meandering out again, then meandering into a nearby charity shop.  They had a blue Brooks Makers, the only Brooks shirt I've ever come across in that situation.  My size.  £5.  Sold.

'As for Gant, their Yale Coop & Rugger (353 Bleecker - NYC) are also very good IMO'. - I'd agree with this RG, I've still got 4 of the CoOp's, and 3 or 4 of the ruggers, 3 of the ruggers are madras, all started life as long sleeves but had them taken down to 1/2 sleeve, I'd seen the coop's advertised before I'd seen them in the flesh, they got a good review from the Weejun, I bought 2 in the newly opened Gant shop in Guildford, afterwards I was mooching in Harrington's and Ian asked what I'd bought, showed him and he said they were excellent, he told me Gant had been 50% of his business,(he couldn't sell it anymore after the Gant shop had opened), I'd say this was the sad decline in Harrington's business, a great shame,

Of course I wasn't really knocking Gant in the original posting, only trying to solicit opinions about Hilfiger.

I think he's chancing his arm with that starting price, Stax, don't you?

Interesting colour, Stax - what would you team it with?

Don't know if this is well known, but a few years ago JS told me the guy who started BS use to buy shirts from the IS to copy them , get inspiration etc,