Ralph Lauren tells a story about his idol, Cary Grant, which says even more
about the designer than the movie star. He once asked his idol, then nearly
80, how he made everything he did in life look so effortless. The answer was
simple: hard work. “We think we know Cary Grant,” says Lauren in his
butter-soft voice, “but he wasn’t really Cary Grant, he became Cary Grant;
he learnt how to be smooth and cool and nonchalant.” Lauren has been accused
of mere marketing, as if his clothes are no more than generic standards spun
into fashion with smart advertising. He wants us to know that
as much creative neurosis – what he calls “sacredness” – goes into his
unthreatening collections as into Galliano’s baroque runway triumphs or
Kaiser Karl’s tireless revisionism. “People say about me, ‘Oh, he doesn’t do
anything and he’s got this huge business, but over the years I didn’t have
money to market anything. I just had a product. People liked it and bought
it… Some want to be on the cutting edge of fashion, they want everyone to
look at them the minute they walk into a room, but I think a well-dressed
man or woman is quietly chic, not noisily trendy.”
At the glitzy Central Park party last month to celebrate his 40 years in
business, the cream of US celebrity turned out: Robert De Niro, Martha
Stewart, Dustin Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker. A liberal elite that
nonetheless swoons at Lauren’s tasteful flag-waving for the American way.
The host that night is not a falsely modest man. Tell him he’s a surrogate
ambassador for the US in its hour of need, and he laughs, knowing just what
you mean; for attached to the global success of his brand is an approval
rating the like of which beleaguered George Bush (whose model niece, Lauren,
steps out with Ralph’s son and heir apparent, David) can only dream of. “I’m
not thinking I’ll run for president,” he smiles. “But I love America. I love
how it has enabled me to come from nowhere and have all this. I try and
present something good in America. I do represent good things, a certain
optimism.”
Lauren may like to dress us as spruce young republicans or prairie-skirted
frontierswomen, but he sells a subtle patriotism, a belief in American
values untarnished by dyspeptic
neo-con foreign policy and superpower hubris, where all is wholesome,
romantic, go-getting. What is his view of Bush and his war on Iraq? “I’m not
a big fan of any of that… sometimes there are people that are not good
leaders. They don’t have the vision.” In his twenties, doing his national
service and then working at the preppy citadel of Brooks Brothers, Lauren
voted for JFK, mesmerised as much by the relaxed privilege of the Hyannis
Port clan, I’d guess, as by the youthful promises of renewal. Now he loves
Hillary Clinton, who, as first lady, finessed his donation of $18m to
refurbish and display in the Smithsonian the original star-spangled banner,
the image he likes to put on folksy cushion covers and T-shirts. “But I also
like Barack Obama. He’s emotionally someone I root for – his newness, the
sense that he’s coming from the heart. I identify with that honesty.”
Fabio Mancone, Lauren’s senior vice-president of marketing and communications,
tells me that the brand stands for America, “but America recalling its own
old-world heritage”. Lauren’s wife, Ricky, born of Austrian parents, has
said that her husband’s style – he wore a pinstripe suit on their first
date, and going by the photos in his new commemorative book, Ralph Lauren,
he seems to have spent his thirties in shorts and cream knitted knee socks
–reconnected her with her European roots. And if he has sold his homeland
abroad, he has also crystallised America’s sense of its own elusive
identity, creating an archive of classic style in his folk-arts textiles or
denim, in Robert Redford’s white suits for The Great Gatsby or Diane
Keaton’s kooky cross-dressing in Annie Hall. Ralph puts a country at ease
with itself the way a politician or poet could no longer hope to. “I think I
did open up people’s taste in America,” he says. “I think I have broadened
their sensibility. Not for a super-fashion person, but for a businessman who
wants to look good but needs direction. I’m not going to scare anyone.”
---------------
Quietly, discreetly, in a corner of a vast office on Madison Avenue, a
surprisingly small man with silver hair, an improbable tan and a slight lisp
is telling me how nerve-wracked he is in the run-up to his spring/summer
2008 collection. I’m not sure I totally believe him: Ralph is all about
self-belief. He is wearing a checked shirt over a stripy T-shirt, jeans, and
sneakers so scruffy I’d have binned them years ago. I don’t need to tell you
what Lauren looks like – but can you picture Donna Karan or Tommy Hilfiger
so easily? However “private” he claims to be, he gives the impression of
assiduously directing the movie of his own life, with the Sinatra
soundtrack, the magical locations. Ralph has splashed his blue-eyed gaze all
over the world, in a mixture of vanity and marketing savvy that has led him
to appear in his ads, the real urban cowboy.
Is there a pressure in embodying the look? Not many designers do that, after
all. “They’re not as handsome as me,” he smiles. One imagines that he has
always been vain. He tells me a writer once described him as “not at all
good-looking in the flesh… in fact, kinda funny looking”. He says he never
spoke to him again. He pauses again before laughing, and you just know he
was at least mildly irritated by the observation. “I was in a few pictures
for Saks Fifth Avenue, and people would say, ‘Who’s that guy?’ I sort of had
a moment of Paul-Newman-ish fame… I was in one of my ads wearing jeans and a
tweedy jacket and cowboy boots, and I knew it was a great picture. If there
is a name behind the clothes, what does he look like? It’s good to know.”
Lauren flirts with English aristos and continental chic, but what he
understands best is American style, the casual elegance of the late-summer
Hamptons – think Kennedys in chinos – the sweaty integrity of Colorado
ranching (Ralph is an ace cattle herder on his Ouray County acres), the
waspish refinement of uptown dinners in the fall, Hollywood glamour, Boston
baked beans simmering under a starlit sky. What his son David calls “my
dad’s universe” is a compelling place, one his fans are desperate to join,
trying to buy the dog in the advert as much as the jacket; and the Polo
website might well provide them with details of its breeder.
Lauren’s flagship Rheinlander Mansion store on Manhattan’s 72nd Street is a
shrine to his virile ego and its quest for betterment, fragrant with fresh
flowers and beeswax polish, overflowing with status symbols: Purple Label
“bespoke” tailoring, loved by the hip-hop fraternity and name-checked by
Beyoncé in her song Upgrade U; the slimmer cut, more European Black Label;
the preppy Polo label; briefcases, silverware, signet rings, sheets,
whatever the aspirant Laurenite doesn’t need but desires to possess. I’m
told that people drop by here as therapy after a stressful day for what
David Lauren has coined “merchantainment”. On one wall is Ralph’s favourite
photograph: Slim Aarons’ 1957 “Kings of Hollywood”, in which tuxedo-clad
Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Gary Cooper and James Stewart share a joke at a
Beverly Hills party – in his dreams, Lauren is the fifth man. The
photographer Bruce Weber, Lauren’s buddy and longtime collaborator, sums up
the fantasy: “As a photographer I feel sometimes like I have music playing
in my head. It’s strictly vinyl, and when it comes to Lauren it’s strictly
Gershwin.” New York is a hard city, so Ralph wants us to feel at home in his
superstore wonderland. At home? If only. But he offers easy escapism; and
though we are all post-modernists now, adept at deconstructing advertising’s
attempts to beguile us, Ralph’s mythical realm is a construct no decent
person wants to tear down.
Lauren is 67. He doesn’t exactly look younger, though he is super-fit, with
his daily five-mile runs and gym workouts. He looks timeless, which is
helpful, as that is the quality he believes best describes his product.
“Things are better when they are older,” he insists. “I don’t want something
I designed in 1967 to be old.” In truth, his clothes change seasonally as
much as every other designer’s; but the context in which he presents them,
the stage he sets so meticulously, the feel of his world, remains constant.
Perfectly pitched at the aspirant consumer, Lauren sells a lifestyle
superior enough to be craved, yet accessible enough to be considered
achievable. (I know, sure as hell, that I haven’t achieved it when I arrive
at my New York hotel to find that my copy of the new tome, the size and
weight of a pavement slab, can only be redeemed from the concierge at a cost
of $10.50 and, having lugged it to my room – not a Navajo blanket in sight –
the carrier-bag handles snap, leaving red welts in my palms.) It is not so
much that his fans long to wear the Lauren collection – as some fashionistas
would kill for the latest Chanel, or Marc Jacobs – it is that we all want a
taste of the freewheeling, high-rolling freedom they are made to enhance.
In the new book, jostling with the iconic advertising campaigns and memories,
sit the soft monochrome images of Ralph and his unfeasibly attractive family
at home on the range, radiating health, good times, togetherness: all the
corny old qualities our cynical world gropes to embrace. Ralph needs us to
envy him, he also wants us to admire him: a tricky combination he somehow
pulls off. Indeed, there is much to envy. Lauren has six houses: an estate
in Bedford, New York, the Double R L ranch, the Fifth Avenue apartment, two
Jamaican villas and the Long Island ocean-front house; and a classic-car
collection so notable, it has been exhibited.
“I am actually conservative about acquiring things,” he says. “I have an
innate sense of wanting to not be too flamboyant.” Wait a minute, Marlboro
man lives a life overstuffed with gorgeous accoutrements, overloaded with
fabulous homes and no time to live in them. “But not ostentatious,” he
insists. “It’s a beautiful life. It’s a dream life on some levels. If you
went to my ranch, you’d say, ‘Well, this is a real working ranch.’” And then
the true power of his real-estate portfolio. “You’d also say, ‘I wish I’d
had this.’ But it’s the real life. My family are real people. I see them on
weekends. I’m very close to my children. You can’t set up a fake family.
When we were photographed as a family, I never wore make-up, and it’s not
staged. Do I want to look good? Sure. But it’s never been about advertising
my family… These days I don’t like pictures so much. No, I’m kidding. But I
like this book, it’s my Picture of Dorian Gray. You can see my life in front
of you.” Does it make him feel nostalgic? “Yeah. It chokes me up a little,
actually.”
In 1991, Lauren won the Council of Fashion Designers of America lifetime
achievement award. He cried when he was told he had been unanimously
selected by his peers and rivals, including Donna Karan, Calvin Klein and
Oscar de la Renta. Unsurprisingly, when he watches the montage of family
films assembled for the occasion, he also gets a little teary. The weird
thing is that so do I as I sit in the office of his communications chief
watching footage of Ralphie in cowboy hat, and toddlers on bikes, the
battered white Jeep they still use, the Bedford estate where on Saturday
nights, David tells me, they’d play ping pong, and he and his siblings would
compete to see who could invent the best flavour milkshake for their dad.
The home movie is imbued with a sense of something lost: not just the
intervening years, but a simplicity, a certain American innocence before the
twin towers, before Abu Ghraib and Enron: family values entwined with grace
and beauty. Frankly, you’re lying if you say you don’t want to be there,
living it.
Ralph married flaxen-haired Ricky Low-Beer in 1964 when he was 25 and she was
a 19-year-old part-time dance teacher with no money, no connections, no
modelling contract. When they married, he had just $3,000 in the bank, and
took a one-bedroom apartment on 74th and Third. He was ripped off by the
landlord, lost the case in court, and all his savings. “So, you know, I
struggled. But we both loved beautiful things, and we both had aspirations.
I think that’s good and healthy. We should have a dream of a good life, of
how we’re gonna live and bring up our kids. What else is there?” They had
three children: Andrew, 38, a film producer, Dylan, 33, who owns a candy
store on the Upper East Side, and the crown prince, David, 36, gently
spoken, a quirky dresser, a chip off the old block, in charge of marketing,
advertising and unofficially rejuvenating the family firm. He oversaw the
arrival of the edgier Rugby label and Polo.com. Originally in publishing, he
joined the company when his father told him “there were a lot of
opportunities”, which sounds like a euphemism with which the Queen might
seek to interest Prince William in her job. But the Lauren ethic can never
afford to prize youth at the expense of seasoned maturity. Even in women. It
was Ricky’s search for simply tailored clothes that informed the mission of
Lauren’s womenswear, and at 60-plus, still slender and long-haired, she is
still his muse and best model.
“I think you get better with age,” says Lauren. “There is a character and
spirit that you see. I never minded my hair going grey. I never minded
having rips on my shirts.” When Bruce Weber – the photographer responsible
for the best of Lauren’s campaigns – first got to know Lauren, they used to
visit an antique-clothing store in Martha’s Vineyard called Take It Easy
Baby. “Needless to say, the clothes were the kind you would fight over with
your best friend,” says Weber. “Fishing vests, clammers, Black Watch
jackets, and original Levi’s from the ’50s. We would all be so depressed
because Ralph always got the best things in the shortest amount of time.
Luckily for all of us, he made these things for the outside world – objects
of material filled with fantasy dreams, but mainly love songs.”
The word patina comes up a lot in conversations with Ralph and his gang; part
of the philosophy is reverence for all that is enduring, timeless, handed
down – or, at least, made to look that way, invested with a faux
ancestry. Lauren’s cleverness is to promote poshness without snootiness. He
adores England, where we allegedly all inherit our cashmere. “You go to
someone’s closet and see their tweeds,” he enthuses. I want to laugh at
this, not unkindly, or because the vignette is absurd, but at the sheer
breathtaking nerve of the Jewish kid – little Ralph Lifshitz from the Bronx
– who decided what Englishness was before ever crossing the Atlantic,
and sold it back to us much improved, and more succinctly than Gordon Brown
will ever manage. The irony is that the blue-blooded English society he
worships – personified in his hero the Duke of Windsor, some of whose
wardrobe he has acquired – would have dismissed him as an upstart, and would
never have nurtured his Gatsbyesque self-transformation the way America has.
Is Lauren actually a designer? It is hard to imagine him pinning a toile on a
house model; he doesn’t sketch; he studied business, not design, before
dropping out of Baruch College. His inspiration for a collection is not a
reverie of Balenciaga, instead he’ll cite a novel, maybe Hemingway, or a
biography of Gary Cooper, or a family holiday. “I remember being on vacation
in Santa Fe,” says David Lauren, “and my dad was getting inspired by the
music. He was painting a picture in his head, and when he returned to his
office he said, ‘I brought this great Navajo blanket. What if we took its
patterns and colours and turned them into a woman’s sweater?’” Twenty years
ago his state-of-the-art black Porsche turbo inspired a range of black
luggage and clothing, even black tennis kit. “The other night,” laughs
David, “we went to see Roger Federer playing [Lauren sponsors the US Open
Tournament] and he was wearing black. My dad said quietly, ‘I did that 30
years ago.’”
In 1989, Lauren took his kids to see Tim Burton’s Batman. “In the middle of
the movie, for one second, the colour of the tile on the floor was this cool
off-white, and my dad leans over to a guy who works in the company, who had
come to the screening with us, and says, ‘That’s the off-white I want.’
Nobody else in the world would have noticed, but his eye caught it. He was
as excited about the black Batman outfit and the Batmobile, which then
inspired a whole line of clothes, as about the fine English floors in Bruce
Wayne’s manor.” The informality extends to building his teams; the younger
Lauren tells me his father recruits designers by simply spotting their
taste. “He will look at someone and say, ‘I love what you’re wearing, I love
the way you put it together, I’d love for you to come and work in design.’
And they say, ‘Ralph, I don’t know how to design, I don’t know the first
thing about it.’ He says, ‘Neither do I. We’ll make it work.’ ”
Lauren famously started out working for the tie manufacturer Abe Rivetz. He
broke away in 1967 with a loan to make his own, far more exquisite versions,
which he sold to Bloomingdale’s after Rivetz told him: “The world’s not
ready for you, Ralph.” “They cost $20 in an era when men’s ties were $5. I
made the best stuff in America because I believed that beautiful things
could be made here.” He called his fledgling company Polo, because he wanted a
sporty, classy name, and because he always saw himself as the dashing hero
of the chukka.
“It could easily have been called Cricket,” says David, “or Baseball”, but
tellingly, he went with the sport of the Windsors. “When I started with
clothes, it wasn’t necessarily a fashion message,” Lauren reflects. “It was,
how would I like my kids to grow up? How do I spend my weekends?” He
bristles slightly when I say that once his ties were launched the rest of
the empire was erected fast (from ties to womenswear, via menswear, in five
years), maybe because he fears making the climb sound easier than it was.
“No, no,” he says. “It was doubly hard because nobody had heard of me. There
was no big blast in the papers. I wasn’t coming from Paris with a name like
Pierre Cardin, who was all over the magazines and glamour parties. I was
just a working guy, delivering my ties by hand, getting in a cab with bags
in my hand. I went up the hard way.”
As the business has grown, purveying perfected plaid shirts or cricket whites,
not to mention the everyman Polo shirts, his ambition has redoubled; the
brain tumour he suffered at 50 only renewed his appetite for expansion. Over
the past year, Lauren has been buying back licences for tighter control of
his global brand. He has new stores planned for London and Paris, and will
be launching fine jewellery and watches. Recently, he was offered the chance
to create a hotel in Utah, which he turned down because “I felt I wasn’t in
control”. In the days before I meet the oracle, the issue of control is
manifest. I am introduced to a series of senior vice-presidential
this-and-thats, who all have the same question: Have I got it, have I
understood what Ralph is about, have I really and truly got the point? There
is a tangible, if charmingly disguised, fear that the outsider might not
have appreciated the greatness of the king, might – horrors! – have
underestimated how brilliant you need to be to make things look apple-pie
easy.
Where does the drive come from? The rags-to-riches cliché seems too easy, and
inaccurate.
“I never thought I was poor. I didn’t think I was ragged. I didn’t have
luxuries, I didn’t have a bike, but it was a nice family.” Lauren grew up as
Ralph Lifshitz, son of an artist who worked as a painter and decorator. As a
kid he was small, sporty, popular, sure of himself. One of four children, he
changed his name as a teenager with his brother Jerry, now executive
vice-president of Polo men’s design. He had crushes on things: if he bought
a shirt he “fell in love with it”; in a rock’n’roll era he wore tweeds with
leather elbow patches. “I wore button-down shirts. I loved things that were
not necessarily American-American. I didn’t want the Cadillac with fins,
even in my dreams. I wanted an old MG, or an English Morgan. I always had a
strong belief in my own taste. My taste grew at a nice level beyond my
dreams, I mean – where did I come off thinking I was going to get a
Rolls-Royce?”
In 1997, Polo Ralph Lauren was publicly traded on the New York stock exchange,
making more millions than Lauren could ever need. He is philanthropic US
royalty, with a cancer centre bearing his name, a Jamaican stamp issued in
his honour, a life of tributes and honours. If the young Ralph could have
seen the accolades, what would he have thought? Lauren doesn’t imagine he’d
have been overly amazed. “I went to the movies; if Tarzan was playing, I was
Tarzan, never a supporting actor. I always reached up – and I don’t know
why. When I went to a dance the girls liked me. I felt a bit of a star. I
was a cool kid in the neighbourhood. I dressed nicely.”
Lauren may have exhausted the available archetypes, but his cowgirls and
aviatrices are endlessly recyclable; hankering for the good life is a
timeless commodity in which to trade. Does his success still make him happy?
He shrugs. “Sometimes I think it worries me. I have so much, how did I get
so much? It scares me, it’s a little unbalanced. But the only thing I can
say about that is that nobody handed it to me.” What does he worry about –
not money, at least? He smiles: “I worry about keeping it.”
His life is rich but lushly cluttered, a minimalist’s nightmare, encumbered
with tasteful objects and badges of wealth. Does Ralph Lauren ever get sick
of things? “Yes, right now I feel we have too much. I don’t want any
more. I don’t go shopping, it’s a pleasure that I now don’t have. I
don’t want any clothes, I don’t want anything. What matters is health. I run
in the morning, I’m always playing tennis; I’m not just sitting around
counting my money.” He pauses and chuckles at himself. “I’m never doing
that.”
