Will this make my "Tommy" a "Wally?"

The Washington Post reports that Wal-Mart, apparently dissatisfied with its low-rent image, is looking to acquire a little cachet.

Now rumors are circulating that the Bentonville, Ark., retail giant may try to upgrade its dowdy image by buying clothier Tommy Hilfiger Corp., known for its red, white and blue apparel.

I can think of a couple of reasons that this move is not worth the effort.

First, Tommy Hilfiger is a brand on the decline, as the Post story notes. I was in my twenties when "Tommy" was at the the peak of its popularity. It was what to wear. This is no longer the case, and it is hard for me to understand how Wal-Mart can move its image onto a higher plane by hitching itself to a tired horse.

Also, and this is a correllary of the first point, association with Wal-Mart is only likely to accelerate Hilfiger's decline. Wal-Mart isn't cool. Wal-Mart is cheap. That's why people shop there. Hilfiger customers were willing to pay 60 dollars for button-down twills because they were cool. In other words, they didn't come from Wal-Mart. "Tommy's" were expensive because they were cool and they were cool, in part, because they were expensive. This deal would be a double negative because it would render them neither.

It would make more sense for Wal-Mart to begin its own premium line of extremely well-made, comfortable clothing and then to sell it at a new spin-off outlet or at fine retailers everywhere. This is what Honda, Toyota and Nissan did when they created, respectively, Acura, Lexus and Infiniti.

Ford bought Jaguar. Jaguar is no longer the the status symbol that it was before. It is still a nice car that a lot of people would like to have, but a "Jag" is not quite the big deal that it used to be.

What Wal-Mart is doing with Tommy Hilfiger would be analagous to Hyundai trying polish its image by purchasing BMW. It would degrade the BMW brand, rendering it worth less to Hyundai than it was before the takeover.