The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
The 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story and incredible business success over these past fifty years. The Clifton Review will take an inside look at how he did it.
A Choice That Led To 50 Years Of Success!
By P.J. Malone
In reflecting on the lives lost last year, 2018 is certainly a year to celebrate being present and the potential for many new opportunities. As always, these first few days of a new year is filled with joy and hope—hope of being able to take advantage of any possibility to steer our futures in the directions that we all wish.
Unfortunately for some, it isn’t long before the New Year’s resolutions are forgotten and lives return to that ho hum existence: mainly because it isn’t always easy to see the road ahead to reach our seemingly elusive dreams for our future lives.
But, we must try.
For one individual, New Year’s Day 50 years ago marked the beginning of an awesome adventure, after a fateful December decision. Faced with the choice between spending the day with a Miss Sweden—a once in a life time opportunity that most men would covet—and attending a 9am Saturday Morning job interview, he reluctantly chose the job interview.
In speaking with him he will tell you that he doesn’t know why he went on that job interview. He already had a job that he loved. Considered a boy wonder and quickly moving up the ladder at his present company, there was no real reason to look elsewhere.
And to give up the beautiful Miss Sweden, a woman he wanted to marry after falling in love earlier in the week while acting as her interpreter in Canada; he thought sure he’d lost his mind making that choice.
Nevertheless, that is the choice he made.
While we are faced with choices daily, there are times when the choices are not easy ones. Yet, those difficult choices are the ones that have a major impact on the direction of our lives.
How many would have made that same choice—a job interview over an international beauty queen? There is never a way of knowing what the future would bring. If we could know that, we would each see the opportunities coming from a mile away, and we would all make the right choices.
Instead, we only see the choices right in front of us and must choose that which will take us in the direction we wish to go.
Still, even difficult decisions have clues embedded in them that tell us which direction might present the best potential for taking us where we want to go. The clues relate to what we really want out of life and how badly we want it.
For 26-year-old Peter John Nygård 50 years ago, he wanted business success. He could have settled for the success he was having being one of Eaton’s (of Canada) regional managers already with several promotions under his belt. He could have thought, “Who goes to an interview on a Saturday morning? Miss Sweden is leaving tomorrow. This is my last opportunity to spend time with her and get to know her.”
But he didn’t. For a man who started life in Canada with his family living in a one room thirteen feet by fifteen feet coal bin with no running water and an outdoor toilet, he looked past the present to his long-term future.
Many choices present new opportunities for us. It’s up to us to make the right one.
And even when we make a wrong choice, the best we can hope for is to have an opportunity to make a course correction.
Though, we must always keep in mind that age old saying, ‘opportunity only knocks once’. For Peter John Nygård, it knocked, he answered, and fifty years later he enjoys the spoils of fifty years of unprecedented business success in the fashion industry.
We’ll be taking a detailed look over 2018 to discover how he did it.
