happyfilmluvguy
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,541
Page 1-After 40 years of capturing ideals with polo shirts and in cinematic ads, Ralph Lauren may be gearing up for a Hollywood ending -- directed by him of course.
By Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 16, 2007
NEW YORK -- RALPH LAUREN'S mahogany-paneled headquarters on Madison Avenue is more Old England than Old Hollywood. But hanging near the doorway to the designer's inner sanctum is one of his most prized possessions: a photo of Clark Gable, James Stewart and Gary Cooper -- with Lauren's face superimposed into the scene.
There's no doubt Lauren thinks of himself as a movie star in the studio-system mold. But unlike his idols, he never breaks character. Fiercely protective of his art-directed image, he is more controlling than the most difficult A-lister, demanding that interviews and photos be conducted on his terms, if he agrees to them at all. You don't build the most successful American luxury brand in history, with more than $4 billion in revenue, by letting a photographer snap your bad side.
PHOTO GALLERY
Director's cut
At age 68, Lauren is at a critical juncture in his career. In June, he received the first Fashion Legend award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America, presented by Oprah Winfrey no less. In October, Rizzoli published a comprehensive book on his work, lavishly illustrated with photographs from his cinematic collections and advertising campaigns, which themselves have become part of American iconography, even as they reference icons such as American flags, cowboys, quilting circles and such upwardly mobile characters as Jay Gatsby.
But the future is uncertain. Just how does a brand go on without the person who so defines it? And how does Lauren go about selling American ideals around the world when those ideals are increasingly ringing hollow?
His 40th-anniversary show in September would have been an easy exit. He rented out the Conservatory Garden in Central Park and hosted a who's who of New York -- Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Martha Stewart, Sarah Jessica Parker -- for a lavish runway show and dinner party. Instead of looking back, he looked forward, reinventing the polo shirt and jodhpurs for a new generation, crystal studded and candy colored.
For now, Lauren is charging ahead. He's opening stores around the world and considers himself an ambassador, and not just for his company. At a recent spate of store openings in Moscow, he says he was greeted warmly. ("It's not the people, it's the politics" is his way of explaining how he continues to sell American ideals.) And in February, he will launch a lower-priced American Living brand of apparel and home furnishings at JC Penney.
In between it all, he dreams of making a real movie or becoming a photographer. But there's always another collection. "Even just walking up the stairs coming into this office, I said, 'Oh, Jesus.' It's 40 years of doing this, and it gets bigger and more diverse," he says. "It's exciting, and it's what I wanted. But this is a public company, and I have to perform. I have to keep going. And the question is: How do you keep going and stay current? How do you stay current in a changing world when you are constantly turning everything upside-down?"
Lauren showed up for a recent interview wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, with a rodeo-sized silver belt buckle dominating his small frame. His office is the one modern spot in otherwise antique-looking headquarters, which resemble the Rhinelander Mansion that Lauren converted into his New York flagship in 1983. We sit around a glass coffee table with photographs and mementos scattered about, including a 50th-birthday card his kids made for him, dusted with glitter. Soft-spoken, he is at ease talking about his achievements and eager to impress. But in the background, there always seems to be a nagging pressure and a bit of self-doubt.
We had agreed to talk about films and how they've influenced his work. As it turns out, he's no expert, having just seen the 1939 style classic "The Women" for the first time. But like all good Hollywood honchos, myth-making is at his core.
An almost scripted life
By now, his back story is well-known. It could be a movie itself, a rags-to-riches epic. He grew up poor in the Bronx, the youngest of four born to Frank and Frieda Lifshitz. He wanted to be an actor but, he says, didn't think he was good-looking enough. But he always had style.
"I'm not a fashion person," Lauren says. "But for my sense of myself, it was important."
Not that it was about fitting in, because Lauren didn't dress like everybody else. One senses it was a way for him to stand out. He may not have been the fastest runner or the highest test scorer, but he was probably the best dresser. "I was into Army surplus. I liked rugged things. I liked washed-out jeans when nobody cared about them."
After graduating, he went to work at Brooks Brothers, then for Beau Brummell, a necktie manufacturer. He wanted his own line of wider ties in higher-end fabrics. His bosses reluctantly agreed, giving him a drawer in the showroom in the Empire State Building. He called the line Polo and did $500,000 of sales his first year. He was 28.
When he took his ties to buyers at Bloomingdale's, they wanted to sell them without the Polo label, using a Bloomingdale's label instead. Lauren walked out, and they came calling six months later. Where did he find the moxie? "I don't know," he says. "I believed in myself. But I wouldn't want to do it again."
He went from ties to menswear in 1968, to women's button-downs in 1971, the same year Jerry Magnin opened the first Polo store in Beverly Hills. His idea, making men's clothing for women, wasn't radical. Yves Saint Laurent had put women in tuxedos in 1966, and Katharine Hepburn was an icon in slacks long before that. What distinguished Lauren was his ability to dream bigger than one garment or one season. He gave America a fashion identity.
In 1978, he presented his first collection inspired by the West and appeared in his first ad campaign. By 1983, when home furnishings launched, he had the makings of a lifestyle brand, before it became a marketing cliché.
He was central to the story, always playing the part. Still, it's something of a shock to see that his family photos -- masterfully directed with his two sons and daughter on the beach in Long Island, or at the ranch in Colorado -- are interchangeable with his advertisements. In one photo from 1977, he is walking on the beach with his wife, Ricky, while wearing a down vest with no shirt and cutoff denim shorts. The same kind of odd juxtaposition appeared in a menswear ad that year, picturing a rugged cowboy in a black tuxedo, a beat-up hat and a fur-trimmed coat, walking his horse in the snow.
Lauren has a difficult time explaining that vision and turns the question back on me. "What would you think if you saw me on the beach in a down vest and shorts with boots?" I tell him that initially I would think it was a bit weird. Then I would probably say, "You know what? He pulls it off."
"I do believe in individuality," Lauren says. "You want someone to come into your house and say, 'Gosh, that looks like you.' You don't want to be gray. I think all my life I have never been gray."
Page 2- The ad campaigns became more elaborate as the years went on -- multimillion-dollar productions shot by photographer and collaborator Bruce Weber on location in Hawaii and England. "If you look at the Safari ads, they had people and kids. I could have just put words to them and you would have had a movie."
The images do stay with you -- the Santa Fe collection, the Safari collection, the Folk Art collection, the Amelia Earhart collection. They are markers for moments in time. Perhaps it's because Lauren conceives of collections like a filmmaker, starting with a story or a character. Then his creative team comes up with the costumes and the sets, or "rigs," as they are known in Lauren parlance.
PHOTO GALLERY
Director's cut
"I gotta get the story, I gotta get the characters and then I know what to do," he says.
For the 40th-anniversary collection, the process went something like this: "I started thinking about jockeys and jockey hats and colors and horses," he says, the words tumbling out. "Then Central Park came to my mind, and I started thinking about Ascot. Then I thought about 'My Fair Lady' and Toulouse-Lautrec. Ascot was a little dowdy, and I wanted something sexy and cool, so I started thinking about the black stockings they wore at the Moulin Rouge and the cancan. It was a mix of real life and a movie, and it had to be translated into contemporary life, for someone coming in from 5th Avenue and saying, 'I want to see your clothes."
"What did you think of that?" he asks me. I'm not sure if he's flattering me or trying to flatter himself. But I liked it and I tell him so. He stoked the dream just enough to keep us all buying Polo shirts and cologne.
Lauren is obviously still charged by the creative process, and though his son David, who oversees advertising, marketing and public relations for the brand, seems to be stepping into a more prominent role, the designer shows no signs of letting go. "It would be hard for me to be a retired person," he says. (And that's saying a lot, considering he has estates in Manhattan and Bedford, a ranch in Colorado and a beach house in Jamaica, plus a world-class collection of vintage cars.) "The problem is, I may not have a lot of time. If you are working, the days go by very fast. I don't get a chance to sit back and think about what's next."
The idea of making a real movie is intriguing. "There are very few contemporary movies that are inspiring to people. That I would like to see, and that I would like to do." One thing's for sure, there is more synergy now between Hollywood and 7th Avenue than ever, with Harvey Weinstein producing "Project Runway" and relaunching the Halston label, and Ridley Scott developing a script about the Gucci family.
But Lauren doesn't have any illusions. "I have a lot of respect for moviemakers, but you don't walk into the movie business overnight."
Besides, L.A. has always made him a little queasy. "When you get to California, you see movie stars on the street, and they are not their movie. They are just individuals."
In Lauren's world, every day really is larger than life.
Link to a photo gallery
From the LA Times
