The Patriot

As he celebrates his fiftieth anniversary in the business, Ralph Lauren reflects on what it means to be an American designer today.

- Veronique Hyland

“I never knew I would be a designer,” Ralph Lauren insists. “I didn’t even know what a designer was, but I knew I had something inside of me that I wanted to express.” The particulars of his story are well-trod: the kid from the Bronx who started out making ties, and with no formal design training whatsoever, now has 11 fashion labels, 1,014 stores, four restaurants, a philanthropic foundation, and six Olympics’s worth of team uniforms to his name. (And he still makes ties, too.)

It is, he acknowledges, a very American narrative, one that could have been spun by Horatio Alger. Not just the part where he summits the peaks of high fashion, but the part where he brings along with him the standbys that were once seen as casual workingman’s staples or regional curiosities. Would we be seeing ripped and weathered jeans or lumberjack plaids on the runway if not for his influence?

“When I started out, everyone in the fashion world seemed to look toward Europe for newness and real fashion,” Lauren recalls. “I was always inspired by America. I loved East Coast preppiness, the utility of the cowboy’s worn jeans, American folk art, the glamour of Hollywood, and the rich heritage of Native American craftsmanship. It’s always been there, right in front of us—on the streets, in the small towns, in the big cities—in the way people live.”