American Dream from Ralph Lauren

Entering the Rhinelander Mansion on New York's Upper East Side is like quietly opening a window into Ralph Lauren's mind. Many describe Lauren's superpower as his ability to turn his wildest dreams into reality, and inside that mansion, Ralph Lauren's original flagship location, his dreams are made real in every nook and cranny of the place.

Each room presents one lavish scene after the next, and it's not hard to imagine Lauren himself toiling at the displays to make sure everything sits just right. Spaces are small and illuminated with candles and the softest of lighting, beckoning shoppers to linger. A glass of water arrives on a small silver platter, garnished with a single slice of lemon, just for you.
 
It's stunningly clear here, walking slowly up a staircase lined with oil paintings from the company's collection, that Ralph Lauren is a lifestyle. No detail is left to chance: Ralph Lauren ties are fanned out on a table in front of a bar stacked high with Ralph Lauren shirts, next to a case of monogrammed Ralph Lauren cufflinks. Ralph Lauren briefcases are placed next to Ralph Lauren paperweights on a Ralph Lauren desk topped with Ralph Lauren stationery, positioned underneath a giant, glittering chandelier that can't possibly �� but maybe? �� be branded Ralph Lauren. Everything, right down to the 82,000 square feet of mahogany hauled in for the mansion's renovation in the 1980s, reeks of style and status and money. Old money.
 
Twenty blocks away, inside the Lord & Taylor on Fifth Avenue, the dream gets a little murkier. Lauren Ralph Lauren dominates one of the women's floors, and while the gold-plated signage is shiny and the tan leather couches comfy, the endless sea of khaki dresses belted at the waist are not so much impressive as they are predictable. There are no nooks nor crannies filled with odds and ends from Ralph's archives; nothing begs a pause. Jammed up in between racks of floral fit 'n' flare dresses and rows of athleisure, it's harder to see Ralph Lauren's appeal. A similar scene unfolds on the sales floor at the Herald Square Macy's, a short 10-minute walk away.

Once you leave the giant department stores of New York City and head to the malls of suburbia, Ralph Lauren becomes a few racks of Oxfords, polos, and pleated pants. Reliably found in your local Dillard's, and just as reliably found on sale.
 
"The clothes look good in magazines, but look older in stores," says Christina, a 31-year-old from Long Island, flipping through a rack of button-down shirts at Macy's. She likens the brand to Michael Kors �� oversaturated and devalued. "I would never buy Polo at full price."
 
Jan Freemantle, a tourist visiting New York from Sydney, Australia, recalled how her husband used to bring her back Polo shirts picked up on business trips to California before she could find the brand in Sydney. Polo was all she knew about Ralph Lauren until recently, when on a trip to Aspen, she came across a Ralph Lauren store that carried the Purple Label and Collection lines. "It was so nice, but so expensive," she says.
 
Most shoppers haven't encountered the totality of Ralph Lauren's world. How could they? Since the early 2000s, Ralph Lauren Corporation has owned and operated at least 25 different brands. It's a staggering list: Polo Ralph Lauren, Polo Jeans, Polo Golf, Pink Pony, Purple Label, Blue Label, Black Label, Ralph by Ralph Lauren, Lauren Ralph Lauren, Lauren for Men, Women's Collection, RRL, RLX, Rugby, Denim & Supply, Club Monaco, Chaps, Ralph Lauren Childrenswear, Ralph Lauren Watches, Ralph Lauren Fine Jewelry, American Living, Ralph Lauren Home, Lauren Home, Ralph Lauren Paint, and Lauren Spa. Not all are still in operation.

For the shoppers who actually are familiar with the company's multitude of lines, it's still exhausting. "The identity of the brand gets lost," laments Efney Hall, who has been shopping Ralph Lauren for over decade. She likes it for its classic, elegant appeal, but she's noticed that lately, the fit of the pants has changed. She finds herself skimming over the brand's Lauren Ralph Lauren racks. She's over it.

Ralph Lauren is clearly a man who knows how to build an empire, but right now, the empire is in turmoil. Layoffs have struck the company two years in a row, eliminating 750 jobs in 2015 and another 1,000 this summer. (One former Ralph Lauren designer commented to a colleague on Instagram in June: "Glad you survived the RL Hunger Games this week!")
 
Lauren has stepped aside to make way for a new CEO, Stefan Larsson �� the first person besides Lauren to ever hold that title in the company's 50-year history. The company has been in the process of whittling down the brand list and there are plans to refocus on just three main lines: Ralph Lauren (the new umbrella label for Women's Collection and Purple Label), Polo Ralph Lauren, and Lauren Ralph Lauren.
 
At the same time that Ralph Lauren is reevaluating its structure and bringing in fresh leadership, it also has to contend with the fact that the specific style of Americana that's so deeply embedded in every inch of the brand isn't something shoppers are clamoring to align themselves with now. If the privileged, preppy aesthetic that Lauren built his company around is no longer the height of aspiration, what will the future of Ralph Lauren look like?
 
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Ralph Lauren did not grow up living the lifestyle that would later make him a billionaire. No, Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz, a shy Jewish kid who lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx with his parents and three siblings. In Genuine Authentic: The Real Life of Ralph Lauren, writer Michael Gross paints a picture of young Ralph as a dreamer, never one to run with the crowd. "If white bucks were in fashion, he wore saddle shoes," a former classmate told Gross. "When we wore crew necks, he wore V-necks. He was always a step ahead."
 
Lauren's perception of taste and class was constructed by what he saw around him, according to Gross. His richer friends' parents drove convertibles, went on European vacations, and had country club memberships. In films, he watched Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, and Fred Astaire glide across the screen, wearing beautiful suits and getting the girls every time.

"I grew up playing a lot of basketball, reading, and living at the movies," Lauren said in an old interview that Gross unearthed for the book. "I guess they influenced my taste level. I liked the good things and the good life. I did not want to be a phony. I just wanted more than I had."
 
However, Lauren's mother had set a strict path for Ralph: he was to be a rabbi. He shuttled between secular public schools and Jewish yeshivas during his youth, eventually convincing his mother to allow him to transfer from Manhattan Talmudical Academy, where he was on the Hebrew teacher-in-training track, to DeWitt Clinton High School, an all-boys public school. In his senior yearbook, listed right below his extra-curricular participation in "Lunch Room Squad" and "Health Ed. Squad," Lauren declared what he wanted to be when he grew up: a millionaire.
 
At 19, he and his brother Jerry changed their last name from Lifshitz to Lauren. (As Gross reports it, Ralph polled friends on two alternatives, London or Lauren; he was personally partial to London.) In the official document filed for the name change, the reason listed was confusion over people, both at school and at work, who shared the same last name. In reality, Lifshitz had the word "shit" in it and Ralph's plans for himself did not include dealing with that for the rest of his life.
 
College was never a big draw for Lauren, who dropped out of the City College of New York school system after three years. He was drafted into the Army and served for two years, but the military, with all its rules and regulations, wasn't a good fit either. After the Army, he kicked off his career as a salesman, first for glove companies. Then he got into ties.

Lauren got his first shot at professional tie design at Rivetz & Co., a high-end neckwear company. It didn't go over well. "Rivetz was a traditional firm," David Price, whose father used to own the Rivetz & Co. business, explains. "They were doing all sorts of crazy pinks and oranges and all the Ralph colors, and the industry and the customer base at Rivetz thought it was just atrocious."
 
But instead of backing down, Lauren went from Rivetz to Beau Brummell Cravats, where his boss, Ned Brower, let him sell his own ties �� colorful, wide, and expensive �� out of a drawer in the showroom. Lauren had no professional training in design, but he believed so deeply in his wild ties that other people did too. He caught the attention of Norman Hilton, one of the biggest names in the menswear industry at the time, who eventually became the first investor in Lauren's business. Polo Fashions, Inc., named after the posh sport (not the shirts Lauren would later become famous for), launched in 1968 and, as Hilton's son Nick remembers it, his father poured $75,000 into the startup. By the end of his first year running Polo Fashions, Lauren had expanded from ties into full suits that the Daily News Record (a menswear trade publication that was later folded into WWD) featured alongside heavyweights like Bill Blass and Oleg Cassini.
 
The company was a critical success from the beginning, although according to Nick Hilton, it was always almost bankrupt in its first few years. In 1970, Lauren won his first Coty Award (the predecessor to the CFDA Awards) for menswear, and he launched womenswear after that. In Ralph Lauren: The Man Behind the Mystique, author Jeffrey Trachtenberg describes how the move into womenswear transformed Lauren's business. It was then that he decided to change the name on his labels from Polo Fashions to Polo by Ralph Lauren, in part to imitate how other designers were using their own names on their womenswear labels. And then, for the launch of women's button-down shirts, the company added a new design element: a small embroidered polo player. It was an overnight success.
 
"The polo player became the new status symbol for women," Raleigh Glassberg, the buyer who purchased Ralph's first women's shirts for Bloomingdale's, told Trachtenberg. The shirts were as pricey as Lauren's ties, but it didn't matter. Everybody wanted one. As Lauren's business grew, buoyed in large part by the ��80s prep revival, the polo player became an integral part of the women's and men's lines, including on the polo shirts that became a signature of the Ralph Lauren look.