Ralph Lauren — An Oi Polloi Champion

Ralph Lauren is a pretty intriguing character. Born in the Bronx, he somehow ended up building an entire world out of Ivy League clothes, ranch gear, old cars, country houses and the odd teddy bear. Since the late 1960s he’s been carving out his own wearable vision of the American Dream™, peddlin’ pony-smattered aspiration to everyone from Ivy League students to New York gangs.

His life would probably make a half-decent film, but until someone sorts us a few million quid and one of those clapperboard things, you’re going to have to settle for this meagre write-up. Saddle up…

The scene begins in the Bronx. It’s 1939 and Ralph Lifshitz has just been born, the youngest of four children in an immigrant family. Even from an early age, Ralph was into swanky garb, and whilst most young lads were busy smashing baseballs through windows and stealing apples from market stalls, Ralph was working part-time jobs to get his mitts on the sorts of clothes he’d seen on the silver screen. And when he couldn’t find the specific schmutter he was after, he’d have it custom made.

At 19 he worked part-time at Brooks Brothers while studying business at night. He later spent two years in the U.S. Army, then moved through a few sales jobs before ending up in neckwear. The Brooks Brothers connection is still worth mentioning. The American equivalent of a classic British gentleman’s outfitter, Brooks sold a heady mix of button-down shirts, Shetland wool sweaters and tweed jackets, providing a solid blueprint for the all-encompassing lifestyle Ralph would later make his own.

By 1967 he was working with fancy clothes company Beau Brummell, where he launched a line of wide ties under the Polo name. Going against the narrow neckwear of the day, Ralph’s ties were big, wide and made from unusual fabrics. The first full Polo menswear collection followed in 1968.

Taking its name from perhaps the classiest sport in existence, Polo saw Ralph go beyond the jugular-shielding domain of the necktie and break into making a full range of clothes, inspired by the comfortable way of life he’d always aspired to. Expanding on what Brooks Brothers were doing, he offered a full uniform for anyone wanting to join him in his version of the U.S.A., a parallel universe where everyone drove vintage Bugattis and had a summer house in Maine.

René Lacoste’s classic piqué tennis shirt helped lay down the formula for the Polo Shirt.

This uniform quickly expanded, and rather than just focus on one thing, Ralph looked over the whole expanse of the American dream before serving up choice cuts on one big metaphorical buffet table. René Lacoste’s classic piqué tennis shirt helped lay down the basic formula Ralph later pushed in his own direction with the Polo Shirt, cowboy ranch-wear sat side-by-side with pleated slacks and years before Massimo Osti and Daiki Suzuki were traipsing around army surplus shops in search of inventive pocket configurations, Ralph was harvesting details from functional garb to make hard-wearing gear for civilian life. Fishing… sailing… skiing… no bold and wholesome activity was safe from his magpie eye.

Fishing… sailing… skiing… no bold and wholesome activity was safe from his magpie eye.

Perhaps more importantly than all this, Ralph knew there was more to clothes than just clothes. Ralph’s adverts, a lot of which you can see on this Tumblr goldmine, ignored specs and jargon in favour of glossy images of people living the good life. Not afraid of a bit of camera time, he even got stuck into the mix himself, kicking it as a New York banker or suppin’ suds in a white T-shirt and cowboy hat.

His shops pushed the boundaries too. Rather than just scruffily shove his wares on shelves and expect them to sell, he created mahogany-panelled shops that looked more like private country clubs than retail outlets. No secret handshake or membership card was needed for this club… all you had to do was buy a shirt, or in the case of a certain New York gang, steal one.

By the late 80s Polo had finally outgrown its WASPy customer base, and thanks to the brash multicoloured skiing and sailing garb Ralph was crafting, had caught the eye of a gang of working-class New York kids looking to stand out on the streets of Brooklyn. Dubbed the Lo Lifes, this lot spent the late 80s and early 90s nabbing the most audacious Polo garb from fancy department stores before competing between themselves to see who could wear it best.

A similar, but slightly more subtle, thing was happening over here in Britain. With the birth of ‘club culture’, dress codes were enforced as a desperate attempt to do away with violence and pesky troublemakers. Sportswear was out the window and countless scallies were sent in search of ‘a smart shirt’. The humble Ralph Lauren button-down soon became the shirt of choice for lads trying to get through the doors. In an era that was big on logos, that embroidered pony only added to the appeal.

Today his fanbase continues to expand, and Levi’s aside, there probably isn’t another clothing company which has been pulled into so many different cultural movements and worn by so many recognisable figures, from Raekwon to… er… Johnny Vaughan. That is the trick with Ralph Lauren. The company makes clothes on a huge scale, but they still appeal to dozens of niche subcultures, each with their own version of Ralph’s vision.

Denim obsessives hanker for vintage RRL selvedge… Lo Lifes still hunt down technicolour sailing jackets… skate brands endlessly riff on his classic low-profile sports cap… and all the while Ralph is still there, still heavily involved in the company he started. Some man.