How’s business, anyway? Mr. Hilfiger said there are plans to open a store in Rome. “We’re growing the brand up, becoming more refined, sophisticated,” he said, blond girlfriend Dee Ocleppo smiling at his side.

Then the Transom ran smack into Mr. Hilfiger’s daughter, reality TV star Ally. “I love knowing strange and obscure facts about strange and obscure things, and that’s what this book contains,” she said, quite seriously, of her father’s foray into publishing.

Not everyone was so gung-ho. Actor Bill Pullman, for example, currently starring in Edward Albee’s Peter and Jerry on Broadway, had some thoughts about all those crazy logo rugby shirts. “Corporate entities are now kind of accepted in a way that’s made them almost invisible to our sense of objective awareness that they’re corporate entities,” he said. “So people wear shirts with brands on them, and they’re thinking of it as fashion. They’re not thinking of it as promoting a consumer item. So it’s a very tricky time.”