Downloaded from YTS.MX
MAN: I don't know where any of us would be
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
without that stage.
MAN 2: Music provided an avenue out of the legacy of slavery.
♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYS) ♪
Will the Apollo continue to be a space of black expression?
Or will it be a shrine to the past?
The Apollo has always represented truth.
TA-NEHISI COATES: They made us into a race,
but we made ourselves into a people.
♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
Audrey Hepburn: Dearest Ralph,
As a designer,
you conjure up
all things I most care about.
The country.
Misty mornings.
Summer afternoons.
Great open spaces.
Horses.
Corn fields.
Vegetable gardens.
Fireplaces.
And Jack Russell terriers.
Your story is not about friends.
Or fleeting moments.
But about values, and things that last.
You've not only created a total concept of fashion, and style,
but by your consistency, and integrity,
protected it.
Always reminding us
of the best things in life.
And if you say something is "very Ralph Lauren ,"
you're immediately understood.
(upbeat orchestral music plays)
Ralph Lauren: Everything in this room
is a mix of everything that I love.
So they're gifts of friends,
they're gifts from people in the company.
They all mean something.
And they're not just things.
I'm inspired by everything that I see.
You know, I love old things.
I love cowboy boots, I love details.
I love cars.
They're sort of the beginnings of a concept.
Somehow it all ends up in my clothes.
We ought to work on something that's a little lighter.
This is authentic, but maybe we need to do
a feminine version of that.
I never thought I was in the fashion business.
If someone said, "Are you a fashion designer?"
No, I hate fashion.
Buffy Birrittella: I think anti-fashion was always something
that Ralph was inspired by.
So it really comes out of,
just a gut that Ralph has.
This amazing instinct.
Mary Randolph Carter: Ralph always says, "I never went to fashion school."
He doesn't do his own sketches.
Not all designers do, but many of them do.
These are great. I love these.
I think he was freed.
I think it was an amazing thing
that he didn't have that training.
Ralph: I didn't have the training to cut the garment,
or do some of the things that designers do.
But I had the eye.
And I don't know where it came from.
When I was growing up, I didn't even know what a designer was.
But my father was an artist.
The color
somehow comes from my father.
My father was a painter.
He made paintings
and murals in offices,
and churches and synagogues.
I'd watch him up on scaffolds painting,
and I'd say, "Wow, it's amazing."
But I didn't have his talent.
But somehow, I was given something else.
The artistry came in another way.
(jazzy music playing)
Ralph had this special thing
that rose to the surface.
He had such a great creativity and imagination.
So I always felt a little special about, you know, who I was.
Was I Eddie Fisher? (laughs) Or was I...
whoever the star was at the moment.
When I was a kid, I'd go into a dance,
and the girls,
somehow I could feel that they liked me.
And I couldn't figure out what it was,
whether I was really handsome,
or it was my imagination.
But I enjoyed
if someone said I was cute.
Jerry Lauren: He had a natural affinity
for finding things
and putting himself together,
uh, that made him special.
Like, "Where'd you-- Where'd you find that, Ralph?"
Maybe he'd find a local store
that had an old army jacket, and he'd wear that.
But maybe he'd grab a jacket
and then, and was stylish.
And, and it was like, boom.
Everybody looked around and said, "That's great. That's cool."
He just had style.
Calvin Klein: I saw Ralph when I was a teenager.
We both grew up in the Bronx.
I remember seeing him
because he dressed in a way
that was so different from everyone else.
And I thought, "How cool," you know,
"that he has the courage to walk around like that."
He had a very personal look.
Ralph: When I was 14,
my friend took me up to his house.
And then he opened his father's closet.
I saw all these shoes
with shoe trees in them.
And I said, "Wow, look at that."
I went home and looked at my closet.
It was shoes piled up,
hardly can find one shoe after the other shoe.
I lived in a small little room
with my two older brothers.
I had the cot,
and I realized that I can't wait to get out of here,
so I can have my own drawers and my own things.
I grew up in a very humble way.
My parents were European.
Came to this country when they were 16 and 17 years old.
And they took care of us, and, and loved us.
I always had a nice home life with my parents,
and my brothers and sister.
But you are always aspiring.
You set your dreams.
You're looking out at the world a little bit.
Learning that life could be better.
I could see that there was something
that he was creating,
that I think later on,
uh, he would use in his design rooms.
The vision was the same.
He had this idea about lifestyle,
buying into
you can live this way through his clothes.
(indistinct chattering)
I just walk straight there.
-Okay. -Thank you.
Here's your-- Oh, you want to see, Ralph?
Ralph: You know, when models walk into my office,
they're 18 years old.
No sophistication.
-Michel Botbol: Where are you from? -I'm from Germany.
Ralph: All of sudden they become something else.
-Isabella, where are you from? -Brazil.
Take a walk.
Ralph: The star of your movie.
-Hi. -Birrittella: The light went out.
Birrittella: Interesting, but I can't use this.
(indistinct chattering)
-I think she's good. -Yeah.
-All right. Okay. -She's good.
Ralph: I like very natural women.
Not too much makeup.
She just wears a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.
Not the girl with all the fashion and the designer clothes.
And I love long hair.
Hair blowing in the wind, convertible--
That's what my vision is, what my wife looks like.
Andrew Lauren: My mother is his muse.
She has a great sense of personal style.
Uh, and simplicity.
Dylan Lauren: She's beautiful, and she's very natural.
My dad does not like any makeup on me or her.
He wants very natural beauty.
She really just is so down to earth.
My mom is sort of a tomboy jock
and elegant woman.
David Lauren: My mom walks into a room
and she just looks natural, and dress is flowing,
and he says, "Wow. You look beautiful," he'll say.
And then he'll go into the office and say,
"You should have seen how Ricky walked in. What she did."
The way she was dressed, that's what I'm trying to
capture a little bit of that spirit.
His different characters come to life,
but they all have pieces of my mom in them.
(train rumbling)
Ralph: I grew up passing Ricky's door
in the Bronx.
But we'd never met.
When I met Ricky, she was 19 and a half years old.
There was an honesty
and an integrity to her, and a sweetness,
and by accident, she happened to have been beautiful.
He said, "If I asked you, would you go out with me?"
And I said, "I don't know. Ask and we'll see."
But he thought I was being very clever and coy. I wasn't.
I was innocent, and I said what I felt.
Ralph: I was 24 years old.
And I was not looking to get married.
But we fell in love, and it was like,
after about the fourth date, I thought,
this is the girl I'm gonna marry.
Ricky Lauren: We were children.
We were living there in the Bronx.
I was... We were still kids. (laughs)
We had a small apartment with a Pullman kitchen.
A kitchen that's in the same room as the living room.
We had nothing.
We slept on the floor on a mattress, and-- (laughs)
And that was the beginning.
We had a train above our heads. The El.
It was like a movie.
When we'd hear the noise,
I think it was Barefoot in the Park
when the train went by and the whole room...
It's sort of the young, married couple,
and I remember we had a phone and...
The phone was a turquoise Princess.
And I never, ever thought I'd have a tur-- a Princ--
turquoise Princess phone in my house.
But we loved the phone 'cause it was so modern.
Ricky Lauren: And we'd go down to Greenwich Village,
and there was a store that sold furs.
And they were patchwork furs, very often.
And we'd go searching around for interesting things
that we could decorate the house with.
We had a bulletin board.
And on the bulletin board, we would tack dream pictures.
Things we loved.
Like he would put a Morgan sports car.
Or a beautiful place.
Anything that we'd loved at the time.
His father was an artist,
and he was able to do faux bois, which is fake wood.
He painted it.
So the walls of the living room were wood.
But not really wood. (laughs)
They were painted.
Ralph: And we painted all the little trim in the house,
and they were wrought-iron. We made 'em like gold.
Ricky Lauren: We stayed up all night long gilding.
It was ridiculous. With those fur rugs,
and everything else that we had accumulated.
We didn't have very much, but we were happy with what we had.
This is nice on Vlada.
Ralph: You like that? You want a bag?
Kind of a very cool bag?
Botbol: The one with the studs was cool.
Botbol: Ralph, doesn't have to be exact with the ponytail,
-but there's something chic-- -But when you see her,
when you see her hair up...
-...you want it more dramatic. -Woman: Needs to be more umph.
Ralph: Yeah. Yeah, let me see that.
That looks beautiful.
The bag looks a little rugged.
You know, I didn't know what my story was gonna be.
I didn't say, "I'm gonna be this great fashion designer."
Or whatever you want to call it.
But even as a young man, I had a story
Birrittella: He always had a sense about
what he wanted to look like,
how he wanted his clothes to look.
When he was a tie salesman,
he and Ricky had just gotten married.
And he went to a custom tailor, and...
just told him what he wanted.
No training whatsoever.
And he designed his wardrobe with this tailor.
The Daily News Record,
which was the menswear daily newspaper,
did a story on Ralph back in 1964
on his personal style.
This is three years before he started his business.
He was just this dashing man about town
who, because he couldn't find
exactly what he wanted in the stores,
was having his clothes custom-made
while he was, uh, a salesman.
Ralph: I just knew what I wanted.
I had this passion to get something
and no one was doing it.
So I'm saying, "I wanna buy a tie.
I wanna wear the white tie."
Then I would go to a tie-maker
and have them make ties for me.
Why I wanted the white tie,
maybe I saw it in old movies and they looked great.
Maybe it was on Fred Astaire, and I liked the look.
♪ It's just like ♪
♪ Looking for a raindrop in the ocean ♪
Ralph: And I'd say, "I want it, I want that."
♪ Searching for a dew drop in the dew ♪
Ralph: But I didn't know where to buy it.
♪ Still I've gotta find you ♪
Ralph: Um, I saw 'em in the movies,
but I didn't see 'em in the stores.
♪ I'm gonna count ♪
♪ The folks that we'll meet ♪
♪ Look at each face... ♪
Ralph: I had ideas about newness.
And so I started out making these ties.
And I made them unusual.
My ties were handmade.
They were special.
My mom would sit there with a cousin of hers.
And they'd sew the labels into the neck wear.
And my dad helped Ralph make swatch cards.
And, uh, it was kind of like everybody pitching in.
The office, really, was the tiniest little thing
in the Empire State Building.
And all he had was a drawer. And in the drawer,
he had the samples of the ties and the fabrics.
Ralph: I called the brand "Polo"
because I always loved sports.
And, you know, I-- I thought, well, "I couldn't call it baseball,
or basketball," I said,
and "Polo" sounded sort of sporty.
It sounds like a master plan. It wasn't a master plan.
Not thinking about any of it,
I said, "This is what I want to do. I like these ties.
"I'm gonna make 'em wider. I'm gonna bring 'em over to the store.
I think they're gonna like it."
I brought it over to Bloomingdale's.
'Cause Bloomindale's was the entree into every store.
'Cause every store at that time
was shopping Bloomingdale's to see what was new.
Who the new resource is, what's happening.
And I brought the ties to Bloomingdale's.
The buyer looked at the tie and said, "Ralph, it's too wide.
"And would you make it a little narrower?
"And would you take your label off?
We want to have our store brand."
When our tie buyer
asked him to take the Ralph Lauren label off the ties,
he simply closed up his sample case and walked away.
Ralph: I don't know what gave me the guts to say no.
Not selling to a major store
that was gonna give you all that exposure,
because I want 'em to be the way I designed it, and...
this is the brand, and this is the name.
Jerry Lauren: Right then and there,
that was gonna be his first opportunity
to really do some business, or whatever,
and he walked away.
"Forget about it.
"You don't have to buy my stuff.
I'm not gonna give you your label."
Ricky Lauren: When he told me,
it got me kind of nervous.
But I wrote him a letter,
and on-- in the letter, I said,
"I'm not going to be in your way.
"I'm going to wish for you the wings to fly.
"And I'll be there with you.
Whatever you do, I'm there for you."
Ralph: I loved what she wrote.
It was very deep-felt.
Ricky's parents came from Vienna.
They left when Hitler came.
She grew up hearing what they lived through.
And so, she wanted stability.
She was saying, "I believe in you.
And I think you're gonna do it."
And I did it.
Bloomingdale's came back to me.
-Narrator: The Polo tie, by Ralph Lauren. -(hooves clopping)
-All linen, in 10 smashing colors. -(thwacks)
$12.50 at Bloomindale's, the Father's Day store.
When you have a four-inch tie,
instead of three-inch or two-and-a-half inch,
it changes the way someone looks.
When you had a wide tie,
the next step is you need different shirts and different collars.
Now you had new ties, new shirts,
and you need new suits.
That was the era of the '60s,
the time when the whole men's business
really was going through change.
Ralph: And I found a whole world of, of ideas.
The timing was interesting.
The world was changing.
Fashion was happening for men.
Birrittella: It was the early '60s
when men wore a uniform.
There was just very, very prescribed ways of dressing.
Joel Schumacher: It was the '60s Mad Men era.
Men's clothes
were very-- still very, very conservative.
Ralph: I knew how to do the ties.
But I didn't stop from there. I just kept going.
What am I gonna wear with the ties?
Am I gonna make a shirt? Gonna make a suit?
I found the suit maker. I met the shirt maker. All of a sudden,
they're buying the ties. They're loving the ties. "What else you make, Ralph?"
"I have shirts."
Birrittella: He was doing very flamboyant shirtings.
And these wide lapel suits.
And, uh, so, it was news.
And I was a journalist, so of course, I wrote about him,
because it was fantastic.
He had done this linen belted back suit.
No one was doing wrinkled, unconstructed suits.
You can picture guys in the '30s,
and I immediately thought of Gatsby.
Bridget Foley: He started with, you know,
the kind of clothes that he wanted to wear.
The characters he would like to be.
He wanted to tell stories.
And that was completely new
and revolutionary in the men's arena.
He basically created the menswear industry
as a designer reality.
Ralph: When I was starting out,
uh, the designer name
was not, uh, appealing to men.
They were used to buying in certain companies,
certain brand stores.
But they were not-- Designers were for the women.
And the tailor was for the man.
(indistinct chattering)
Ralph: As long as it has the folds in it, Jerry.
Jerry Lauren: Yeah. I know, I know.
Schumacher: What Ralph did was took some of the great classics,
and made them relevant.
He made them better.
Better fabrics, better fit.
And Ralph's taste...
Bob, if you wanna take off your hat when you're taking it off,
take off your hat.
Schumacher: He has a very critical eye.
And Buffy Birrittella
was so attuned to him
that she knew exactly what he wanted.
(indistinct chatter)
Birrittella: The attention to detail,
whether it's a shirt or a shoulder on a jacket,
those were things that,
you know, he trained my eye on very, very early on.
For chairman of the board, I don't know.
Birrittella: So, when you go out there,
take your time.
Walk back and forth across the T,
and up and down.
One of the things he was trying to do was to meld
the custom tailoring of English Savile Row,
with an American sensibility.
But it was the spirit of the clothes,
not just the technical details of the clothes,
that made me see clothes in a whole other way.
I knew I had to work for him.
Ralph: Buffy was my right arm.
She understood the clothes. I showed her a jacket; she got it.
Her eye was good.
Birrittella: He's very competitive.
Very sure of himself.
He had a real sense about who he was,
and what he wanted to do.
Some would characterize it as cockiness,
but I saw it more as confidence.
He just had a real belief
and passion
about what he was doing.
Ralph came to me and said, "I need a shop."
And in his typical calm, understated way, he said,
"Marvin, if I don't have a shop,
uh, I can't sell to you anymore."
Um, we gave him a shop.
And really planned one in the middle of our main floor.
I mean, going into Bloomingdale's,
I mean, owning a store,
within a store,
I said, "How did Ralph
"get on the first floor of Bloomingdale's
where all the bags and the makeup and the jewelry was?"
But no. Ralph was right there.
He had front stage. Always had.
Ralph had the whole picture.
Ralph: Bloomingdale's, Marvin Traub, particularly,
was a believer.
I became their guy.
And they said, "Keep going, Ralph. We want more."
But it grew too fast.
And I didn't have the right bankers at the time.
Schumacher: There was a certain point,
in the very early days,
where Ralph almost lost the whole business.
Birrittella: In the early '70s,
before we started licensing,
the company had overextended at the bank.
The money going out was far extending
the money coming in.
We couldn't even, I believe, make our payroll .
Ralph: I just remember, like,
one of the guys said, "Ralph, you're out of business."
I remember I was so scared.
I was sweating, but it was cold.
What I was worried about? Telling my father.
I thought, the one person,
I had this vision of telling my father I went out of business.
I got up in the morning; it was raining.
And I don't know why,
but I put on a white jacket and white pants.
I hardly ever wear a white suit.
And I was walking in the rain.
And I said to myself,
"I'm gonna make it back. I'm not gonna let this happen."
I went to my partner, Larry Lockman,
and said, "We have to advance credit to the Ralph Lauren company,
"so they can buy piece goods
in order to ship to Bloomingdale's."
Something we hadn't done for other people.
Ralph: I saved a little money.
I put everything I had back into the company.
And I, I made it back.
I had a voice. I had a showcase.
I can do this.
Designer as a store,
not just a designer as a tie or a shirt.
A designer as a, as a, as a business.
Ralph: You think you have to convince me?
Or, I feel like--
-Man: No-- -I'm sitting here, I'm like--
he's gonna be hard to convince.
-What's, what's strange about this? -Man: No. Just--
The only thing strange, we should have been there
-two years ago, five years ago. -Man: Right.
Tina Brown: One of the biggest flaws in so many fashion people
is that they're brilliant, they're clever, they have beautiful ideas,
but they really don't have any business sense.
He clearly has an extraordinary business acumen, as well.
Jerry Lauren: Ralph knew exactly what he was doing.
He had a sixth sense
to know what the world needs.
-I don't think so. -Ralph: I'm in the business of fashion.
It sounds like a frivolous thing, and it's not important.
But I think it's important that people express who they are.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
Anna Wintour: Fashion has to be desirable, and...
give somebody some kind of emotional reaction to it.
And, and Ralph sees that, and understands that,
and he, he gives them the, the, the whole package.
(applauding)
Birrittella: He always looked at clothes in a cinematic way.
How they created a character.
What they said.
What images they conjured up.
What moods.
Thinking about the man
as a character in his own movie.
Anytime I've ever tried to find a tweed jacket,
or a hacking jacket, or a specific type of trench coat,
you know, like, Rick's trench coat from Casablanca ,
or his white dinner jacket, double-breasted dinner jacket,
it doesn't exist anywhere.
And then you'll walk into a Ralph Lauren boutique,
and you're like, "Oh, my God, he's made it."
These are Ralph Lauren pants, and, you know,
he has the kind of things I like.
Tweed jackets, and those kind of shirts,
and corduroy trousers.
But, um, he doesn't dress me.
I'm dressing myself since I was 48.
I've always thought of him as more than just a fashion designer.
Or a business man. I thought of him as a cultural force.
That he changed, uh, the way that we all looked
and how we should dress and how we wanted to.
Mr. Lauren is with us this morning
to talk about what's coming up in men's clothing,
about his own attitude toward design,
and what we can expect to pay in the weeks ahead.
I came from a rural, working-class background,
but I was ambitious, and I didn't want to wear the same suits my father wore.
My father had one suit.
And, you know, he wore it for everything.
But even the best-dressed guys in town
were all in old men's suits,
and I didn't want to do that.
But there were no other choices for us.
And then suddenly, there was this guy Ralph Lauren.
Ralph: There's an attitude about clothes today
that is much more relaxed,
and unfashionable fashion.
And my role,
in terms of what I've believed in and what I wear,
is that I don't really want to look like a fashion plate...
I remember talking to certain people.
They'd say, "Ralph, I'd love to wear what you're wearing, but I can't.
"I, I, I don't know.
"It's not me. I'm-- I like the jeans,
and I like the cowboy boots and the tweed jacket."
Now every guy I know has tweeds, and jeans,
and cowboy boots.
I think Western clothes are as traditional as a tweed jacket.
And I love things that are not fashion.
I love things that have a sense of, of aging.
Have a background of lifestyle behind it.
What I feel I've given is a certain romantic
fantasy to the clothes.
Wei Koh: He finds beauty in every aspect of American culture,
whether it be Native American, whether it be cowboy.
Whether it's, the, you know, Ivy League culture.
And he finds the sort of nobility, in each of those.
And he created the best possible versions,
the idealized versions of the clothing.
Ralph Lauren democratized
the whole idea of what was stylish.
And that's the story of America.
He was the first one to say,
"No, you know, I think the guy that is the G.I.,
"or the guy that is the cowboy,
"or the guy that's the working man,
he could be just as cool as an aristocrat."
Woody Allen: The key to his success
is an instinctive understanding
that his taste spoke for millions and millions of people.
It wasn't trying to figure out what they like.
It was what he liked.
And he was betting
that what he liked, they would like.
And he was very, very right.
Judith Thurman: You think Ralph Lauren Polo.
That's what you think: Polo.
The most exclusive, kingly sport that there is.
That requires you to own horses,
to know how to ride them.
Ralph Lauren Polo.
Uh, it wouldn't be Ralph Lifshitz Polo.
That wouldn't work.
Jerry Lauren: A lot of people thought that Ralph had changed his name
'cause he wanted it to be more WASP-y.
Absolutely not true.
Aha!
I am the person
who created the name change.
Throughout life,
having a name L-i-f-s-h-i-t-z,
Lifshitz, okay,
was a tough thing to live with.
Ralph and I both went to
the Rabbi Israel Salanter Yeshiva,
and Yeshiva-- even, even though the names were Goldberg,
and Silverberg, and Silverstein, and--
and Cohen, and--
Lifshitz, they still, somebody's, "Oh, hi, Shitzy."
There was never a moment
when I want to escape my origins,
but, I said, "Lenny and Ralph.
"I want to tell you something.
"I would like for us to change our names.
"If you guys would like to do it,
I'm ready to do it. I don't need this shit anymore." (laughs)
Richard Cohen: When I read that that always the reference to his name,
I didn't think there was a smidgen of antisemitism there.
It was like, who was this little Jew to tell us how to dress us?
And I wrote a column to defend Ralph Lauren.
He was coming on, you know. He was becoming bigger and bigger.
And they always pointed out that he was from the Bronx
and his name was Lifshitz. It's a real name.
"Aha." Elbow jab.
"Aha, I see. He's just a Lifshitz."
And I resented it. 'Cause I said,
"No. This isn't something bad. This is good."
And I likened Ralph
to the Hollywood moguls of the '30s and the '40s.
L.B. Mayer, who was the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.
Sam Goldwyn, another one.
The Warner brothers, all but one, were born overseas.
You can go through the list and say, "They were all immigrants."
These guys had an idea in their head.
They were really good when it came to feeling the pulse
of the American people.
Come this way, sir.
Cohen: And that's the eye of the outsider.
That's what Ralph has.
I thought Ralph Lauren, like these guys,
created a look.
He was telling people,
this is the great American look.
And how do I know it? Because first he saw it in the movies.
All you need is frame now, and you'd be a masterpiece.
Andrew Lauren: My dad is a product of the movies.
He grew up wanting to be like the stars on the silver screen
He loved the style,
the... he had heroes.
And I think those heroes inspired him.
He wanted to be bigger and better than where he came from.
I think he has aspirations to not only dress the part,
but be the man,
and move past his upbringing,
and become somebody special.
Ralph: Movies had a great impact on me,
because they opened a window
to a world that I didn't grow up with.
Thurman: The idealization of the WASP-y American dream
is a Hollywood notion,
is a Jewish notion,
is a fashion business notion in America.
And Ralph Lauren's work is very much about class.
About aspiration.
Like Hollywood,
he sold America on a version of the American dream.
(big band music plays)
Ralph: I was always inspired by '30s or '40s movies.
Movies made somewhere around the Depression.
They always reminded me of happy,
make-believe glamour.
Those movies have always made me feel good.
Thurman: Could go to the movies for 10 cents,
and watch a comedy set in a penthouse,
in which the ladies were wearing bias-cut charmeuse evening gowns,
and the men were in impeccable white tie or tuxedos,
and everybody was smoking and drinking martinis.
(big band music plays)
Paul Goldberger: This fantasy of the glamour of a beautiful penthouse,
and an elegant party,
is one part of the Ralph Lauren fantasy.
In the Ralph Lauren version of that,
it's only the elegance and the beauty.
Nobody's drunk.
Nobody's throwing a martini glass and smashing it.
Ralph Lauren has always understood
that people want the world to be comfortable.
They don't really want the world to be full of edge,
and harshness and bitterness.
They want the world to be right.
The brand is there to make you smile.
And to make you feel like, you're, you're dressing the part.
Ralph Lauren is not interested in stirring the pot.
He's not interested in the nitty-gritty.
Ken Burns: In another era, he would have been
one of the great producers in Hollywood.
He would have been able to conjure those dreams
that this kid from the Bronx saw
at the movie houses, and wanted to fully engage in.
With Ralph, the proscenium has disappeared,
and he thinks it is possible
to walk through into the screen.
And be fully in those worlds,
just as he was.
Schumacher: He has built his own world
from a very young age.
And in that world,
the romance,
the allure,
the dream,
is alive.
So it's not a dream anymore.
It's a dream manifested.
(soft acoustic guitar music plays)
Ralph: I always wanted a beach house.
You know, and had no money.
So Ricky and I would just walk around the beach and say,
"If you could have any way you'd want to live,
how would you want to live?"
This is such a beautiful spot.
I have a very hectic life.
And, you know, when I get away,
I need to get away where,
where I have a simplicity of life.
-Oh. -Slide.
Baby. Yeah.
Ralph: And I do feel that my family comes first.
Ricky Lauren: My birthday money from when I was a little girl
went to starting our family.
And I was an only child.
So having three children was a big deal for me.
I was so happy.
And it was my job to be the mother.
To be there to support Ralph,
as he went forward with his dreams.
And it was important for us all to be part of his dreams.
Living the dreams together.
Ralph: My children were always part of everything.
We weren't very social because I never had time.
I wanted to be with my family.
So on weekends, where everyone's going to everyone's houses,
I remember saying to a friend of mine, I said,
"You know, I'd love to be with you, but it's summer.
I'm gonna be with my family."
I remember walking with Ricky one day,
and in East Hampton
they have parties on the weekends, and...
and all of a sudden we were not invited to anything.
I'd see these people,
you know, cars parked in front of all these--
cars going to parties, and going to dinner parties.
"I guess they forgot about us, Ricky."
You know, we, we, uh...
Sometimes you want to be invited,
but you don't necessarily want to go.
But when they stop inviting you, then,
then there's a problem.
Wintour: Ralph, he totally believes in the importance of family.
It's rare to see him out and about.
So, Ralph, in a way, is quite isolated.
And he has a very close-knit group
with whom he feels comfortable,
and can be himself.
His family and people that have been with him for years.
I think he feels most at home and most secure
in these amazing environments that he's created for himself.
And maybe remaining in that cocoon
has kept his vision strong.
Remember, the layering looks good, too.
How many-- Do we have any more of those dresses?
Do we have any more dresses in this?
Do we have more dresses?
After I had success, it built on more success.
We need more of this. Do we have more?
And I started to believe I can do things.
We need more evening.
And it kept coming.
But I didn't think I would ever do women's clothes.
No, lose the color here.
I wanna see how this could look a little sexier.
A little more evening.
-Because it looks a little young. -Mm-hmm.
Ralph: Like, I love the way we look here.
Menswear is easier for me,
'cause I'm a man. I can say, "I want those pants."
But when I'm doing women's clothes,
I feel like I've stretched.
-Yeah, I need these more sophisticated. -...these, these pants.
-Employee 1: Okay. -Employee 2: Yep. Yep, that's cool.
Let's see it without your hat.
I think you can fix this up,
but the white skirt bothers me a little bit.
Employee 3: Right. It's fresher, right, definitely.
-Dynamite. -Right. Okay.
Donna Karan: He knows the fabric.
He knows the silhouette.
-She looks sophisticated. That's what I like. -Yes. Okay.
Karan: He knows what he wants to say.
They look a little too overpowered.
He's shown it all by the people who are gonna bring it in.
And he'll go, that, that, that, that.
Ralph: That's beautiful. Could be day or night.
-Employee: Yeah, agreed. -Ralph: Depends on what we don't have.
-The red could be good. -Yes.
Ralph: This is very sophisticated. We need... let me see that.
That's good. Let me see that.
Brown: One of the great delights of Ralph
is just this sense that his woman can be
in an absolutely drop-dead, incredible, simple black dress.
(indistinct chattering)
Brown: And at the same time,
astride a horse wearing a beautiful silk T-shirt,
and a pair of well-cut jeans.
I just think that he loves women in a way that...
other fashion designers, really, that I can think of, just don't.
He understands women. He respects women.
Birrittella: Maybe she doesn't need the matching belt,
-or the jacket. -Employee: Right. Yeah.
Brown: He celebrates women.
That's good. That's perfect.
That's a great mix.
-Ralph: That's good. -(employees chattering)
Birrittella: Women's wear really started
because Ricky and I were saying,
"Gosh, those are-- Those are great men's clothes.
Make 'em smaller, because we wanna wear 'em."
Ralph: When Ricky first would go shopping,
and she'd go into a boys' store that had
hacking jackets, and so, I'd put the jacket on Ricky.
I'd say, "Oh, that-- that looks great.
I want that. That's what I wanna do."
Ricky Lauren: He said, "Well, I think my muse
"would look wonderful if she wore slacks that were pleated.
"And put her hands in her pockets.
"And, um, you know,
had a great man-tailored jacket."
Or a beautiful silk shirt with a bow.
Or even a necktie.
He was seeing me,
and making things for me the way he thought I would look good.
And he certainly knew how to do the men's tailoring for women.
Birrittella: The first things we did
for women when I first started
were shirts, but they were made in the men's factory.
He had an image in his mind's eye
of what the collar should be.
And the stitches per inch,
and what kind of buttons it should be,
and what the width of the placket should be.
The tailor would go back and make something
and come back and show Ralph, and then we'd fix it,
and tweak it some more, and back and forth, and back and forth.
The attention to every single detail on the shirt
took an entire day,
to fit and perfect one shirt.
At the beginning,
Ralph would have the fashion show
in his office, which was a living room with a fireplace.
And we'd have folding chairs.
And Ralph would stand in front of the fireplace;
he would talk about the clothes.
So it was very informal.
And he had Persian rugs,
and velvet sofas.
And the showrooms were what would have been bedrooms.
Didn't look like anybody else's showroom,
because it was somebody's apartment.
He just loved the idea of this homey place.
Ralph: First small show, I did in my offices.
And I had never been to a fashion show.
After that show, I said,
I called my staff in, which was two people, I think.
And I said, "I just want you to know that this is it.
I wanna quit the women's. I want to leave on top."
I had a good show, and I don't think I could go anywhere else.
How am I gonna do skirts? I don't know anything about skirts and dresses.
I didn't have enough training.
But I found seamstresses and sewers,
and, on 7th Avenue,
and had the sketch,
the looks of the girls
and what I thought they should look like.
And then we made the clothes based on that.
Wintour: Back in the '70s and '80s,
he defined how the American woman was changing.
How a modern woman was emerging.
And what her needs were, and what her life was.
He saw their liberation. He saw their freedom.
Jessica Chastain: Whenever you have a designer putting a woman in a tuxedo,
you're going against the idea of,
and the stereotype,
of what a woman is supposed to be,
and what is she supposed to look like.
Kristin Clotilde Holby: He just had this vision of the Ralph Lauren woman.
Fresh, American, natural,
um, different than what had been going on before.
I'd been modeling for French designers.
Everything was like a caricature.
Purple-fuchsia lipstick,
lacquer on the eyes,
lacquer on the hair.
And Ralph said, "Wash her face.
"Brush her hair.
No makeup."
And I remember thinking at the time,
"Oh, my God. This is something new."
I was so stunned, because for the first time,
it was a picture of me.
A picture of a woman.
It wasn't a picture of somebody's beauty ideal.
Brown: I think if Ralph has one regret,
it'll be that he was not a movie director.
I could see just how cinematic his mind is.
When he talks about an ad campaign,
it's not about just, you know, trying to sell his clothes.
He understands,
almost more than anyone I've met,
the, the potency of the American dream.
(soft orchestral music plays)
Andrew Lauren: He had a very big story to tell.
How better to do it
than to have the New York Times magazine come out
and you've got a 17-page spread
of beautiful people.
Beautiful life, beautiful lifestyle.
Something that is aspirational but attainable.
He was the first to do it.
Brown: And when the ads came in,
it was like an event.
People wanted to see that campaign.
It was as much of a, uh, a thing in the culture,
as, um, you know, the release of a new book or film.
Goldberger: As Polo Ralph Lauren began to become
a national presence,
those ads created an image
that was incredibly powerful.
Deeply alluring...
...and different from what other people were doing.
Mary Randolph Carter: If you look at the early ads, we would go off and shoot
for sometimes two weeks at a time.
And we would pack up all these suitcases.
Men's clothes, then the women's clothes,
and the children's clothes.
And the home collections.
And we'd create, you know, that world.
(indistinct chattering, laughing on screen)
Birrittella: We cast our movies.
Most of them were not models.
One of the men was an architect,
and was the husband of the fashion editor
of Mademoiselle magazine.
And Ralph thought he had great style.
He had this mustache.
We had, you know, sisters of somebody,
and children of, of these people.
Ralph would find some. Bruce would find some.
Buffy would grab something from her-- like a piece of jewelry that,
that she really loved, and Ralph would give us things from his closet.
It wasn't the normal way of working in the fashion business
where it was storyboarded.
Birrittella: One of the things that drew Ralph to Bruce Weber,
Bruce's pictures were very evocative,
and very real, and very anti-fashion.
Ralph: Usually you have an agency that comes in.
They research, and they give you a look.
I didn't need the agency for that.
I knew exactly who I was and what I wanted to say.
And I knew what I wanted for advertising.
I needed to tell a story.
Tim Easton: When I was on the set,
they would give me, uh, all these stories.
Tim, this is your house.
Um, you just, uh, inherited it from your uncle.
But you're trying not to let the other family members know yet.
And then Isabelle's your wife.
Dress you up in these beautiful clothes.
By the time he started shooting,
I mean, you really believe this.
Ralph: I pick the girls. I pick the guys.
I gave them the background.
Birrittella: It's not even about the clothes.
It really creates a cinematic vision
of a life.
Wintour: In working with Bruce,
who is such an American photographer,
and so much adores the American way of life,
and family, and children, and dogs,
and horses.
Together, they created this Ralph Lauren myth
that exists today.
Foley: If Ralph is called out for anything,
and called out is a big phrase,
because it's very hard to argue with the man's success,
it is for the constancy
of his aspirational point of view,
and his optimistic point of view.
Thurman: He's a patriot.
So he channels all these dreams about America,
uncritically, into his work.
And everybody is overjoyed to see them,
because they want to believe that, too.
Americans are very attached to our Utopian notions.
Randolph Carter: We'd done some pictures of just this pristine white barn.
And it was a misty morning.
And he said, "That's my ad."
It just said "Ralph Lauren Country."
There were no models. There was nothing.
And I just remember Bruce Weber said,
"That's one of the bravest things I think
Ralph ever did in advertising."
You wanted to step into that picture,
and you wanted to live in that world,
and you wanted to live in that barn.
Brown: I think people have sometimes
sort of dismissed Ralph as a marketer,
because his advertising campaigns
were so extraordinarily visionary.
Burns: You are not just buying an article of clothing.
You've joined a narrative.
And that's very different than what fashion is.
Andre Leon Talley: The ads had a language of elegance.
And a timeless, classic quality.
It was a lifestyle that spoke to me
as a young, aspiring black man in the South.
It's a classic statement about style.
Ralph Lauren also broke the codes
when he had Tyson Beckford
in those beautiful fitted suits.
Tyson Beckford: You opened the magazine of GQ and you saw that.
It was just like, "Oh, my God. What this this? Who is this?"
Even I said, "Who is this?" You know?
Bethann Hardison: This young man comes along,
and I guess it was just in, in Ralph's eye.
Tyson had something that was street, yet elegant.
And he was dark,
and very handsome.
Beckford: It was the big thing in the black community
for someone of my color,
and my mixed race
to be in something like that.
No one had done that before on that level.
Here is a black man in a $3,000, $4,000 suit,
in a GQ magazine.
Wall Street guys were lookin' at this,
and, you know, uh,
CEOs, businessmen, were looking like, "This suit is nice.
This is really nice. I need to go get this."
Wintour: Ralph, he has always, always,
at a time when it was not so socially acceptable,
championed diversity.
He was one of the first to use African-Americans
in a very meaningful way in his advertising campaigns,
and in his runway shows.
It wasn't a token person.
You know, "Let's just check that box."
He would use them in remarkably strong images.
And they would become the face of Ralph Lauren.
And not many other people were doing it at the time
that Ralph stood up and did it.
It was a big deal.
It was a big deal to have two people of color be in
a nationwide,
or worldwide ad campaign.
Goldberger: When you can create a point of intersection
between enough popularity
to make a very large and successful business,
and enough creativity
to make it feel interesting,
then, then you're kind of onto something.
(upbeat orchestral music plays)
Birrittella: Ralph has been inspired by so many things
that he hasn't been confined to one look.
Ralph: I'm taking things from different worlds.
And there are certain things that I love.
Military.
Safari.
Western.
English riding.
They're all romantic stories.
When I'm working on the collection,
I'm thinking of characters and people,
and movies and books, and...
They're all part of what goes in and then comes out.
And things that I never knew I had,
things that I never knew I carried with me,
are revealed as I start to work.
My childhood,
growing up and my dreams of future, and...
everything I've experienced, everything that I've seen.
The creative process to him is, is like breathing.
There's walls full of clothes and sketches.
The inspiration can come from anywhere.
From an old book, from a painting he might have seen.
Something in a magazine that sparked his imagination.
Ralph: The movie Aviator was coming out.
And I said, "That's what I want to do."
And I just started to work on my next season's collection.
I had to take that and build a whole world around it.
Talley: If he's got The Aviator mood,
he's in a room and there's Amelia Earhart,
and there might even be Katharine Hepburn.
So you had done all the research
of The Aviator looks.
All of that, it's all in the mood boards.
These are rooms-- They are mood rooms.
David Lauren: He's gathering information,
and it's very kind of free form.
And the characters, they're coming to him as he's working.
It's like an artist who keeps adding a layer,
keeps adding a new color.
Ralph: It's like building a statue out of clay.
It's like you take these pieces of clay,
and you throw it on and then you start to mold it.
Randolph Carter: Everything is about a story.
It's never about a blouse, or a pair of pants.
Birrittella: He's from the same hometown as Antonio Banderas.
Randolph Carter: He had a vision of the Riviera .
Gerald and Sara Murphy,
Picasso,
the whole expat American thing back in the '30s.
Ralph: Hemingway had an effect.
It's just something that spurred you on.
So sometimes that's a whole collection,
sometimes it's a little piece of something.
Randolph Carter: It just takes one spark like that.
A picture, a little raggy piece of denim, and he's off.
Birrittella: It's never a literal thing.
It gives you a sense about the color, the texture.
The mood of the clothes.
Ralph: It's about wearability.
It's about understatement.
I believe in timelessness
that doesn't go out with the trend,
that doesn't go out with age.
Goldberger: What he does is take things from the world,
and embrace and synthesize influences.
He is not somebody who created
an entirely original way of seeing and doing things.
Ralph Lauren is not where you turn for the cutting edge.
That, he leaves to other people.
You do not need to have an intellectual view of fashion
to like Ralph Lauren's work.
It, it's, it-- you viscerally respond to it.
Ralph: Not everything works.
When you've gotta pull from your toes,
through your throat to get this thing happen.
You sort of have to have an editor's eye and say,
"I don't think this is good. Put it away."
I always get nervous when you go on vacation.
-Where am I going? Back-- -After, after you've signed off on everything and then--
Maybe Buffy'll get a phone call. "You know, I'm rethinking."
Birrittella: We started one collection.
We were halfway through it.
Bought sample yardage,
we had walls full of clothes, and sketches,
and Ralph came back from, from the holidays,
and said, "It's wrong."
Ralph: And said, "Wait a minute.
I can make it more sophisticated,
because I don't want to look like yesterday.
The next meeting, everything came off the walls.
And he said, "I think I want to do something...
"cleaner, sleeker, more contemporary.
I think I want to do something beautiful with gray flannel."
We went and we, we, ordered all... (laughs)
all new piece goods.
Cream, cream cashmere, light gray cashmere.
Beautiful mauves and pinks.
And it was a scramble.
But we believe in his instincts.
And everyone gets on board.
Brown: He has created a team.
He sets a template. He has a DNA.
Everybody understands, absolutely, what Ralph really wants.
He's had many of the same people working for him for years.
I don't do anything alone. I work with a team of people.
My company's like a repertory.
It's like a family.
They're good, and they understand.
It's a team that's been developed
with my message.
You can't do this alone.
The contrast here.
-Randolph Carter: Yeah, the contrast. -I think that's, that's--
Randolph Carter: One of the things that Ralph has always loved
is contradiction.
There's an amazing picture of Naomi Campbell,
wearing like this slinky,
beautiful, gold, glistening dress.
And Ralph throws a safari jacket
over her shoulders.
Foley: All high-end designers are trying to deal with,
how do you adapt luxury to the increasingly casual lifestyle?
But Ralph sort of forged a lifestyle concept
before it was thing. He did a lot of things before they were things.
And that's one of them.
Ralph's whole immersion into performance wear
and athletic wear was a huge thing.
And it really grew out of his belief in
the lifestyle concept.
Now we have so many people are jumping to do yoga pants.
Ralph Lauren got into it a long time ago.
He saw that it wasn't antithetical
to who he is as a designer or of his message.
This isn't a change.
It's an expansion. It's an evolution.
An extension of casual.
Koh: And it's funny today
that all the young guys are talking about wearing,
you know, track pants, with like, suit jackets.
And they're like, "This is what's happening right now.
"It's all about adaptability,
"and about expressing the relationship
with the urban environment." I'm like, "Guys.
Ralph Lauren was doing that 35 years ago." You know?
Wintour: If you look back at his history,
you see so much of what designers are thinking about today.
Taking these very simple items,
that you see kids wearing on the street,
whether it's a jogging pant or a parka or a T-shirt.
And making them fashion.
And Ralph was the first to do that.
And to understand that.
And in a way, to see how street style,
it would become the world's uniform.
Ralph: I had the timing.
Timing when the mood is there.
Who are you? What's happening in the world?
But you have to have a strong vision,
and staying power.
Klein: For every good designer,
the clothes are an extension of the person.
It has to come from within him.
And it clearly does.
And his idea was,
it wasn't just a collection of clothes.
It was this complete lifestyle.
And it was all consistent
with this dream that he has.
Karan: He really put the world together.
Children, furniture, men's, women's.
The pillows, the sheets, the blankets.
The duffel bag.
Margaret Russell: Ralph Lauren was the very first fashion designer
to design a full home collection.
Martha Stewart: He took lifestyle and made it...
haute style. He made-- He just made,
took simple, everyday beautiful things,
and made everybody covet them.
You can buy a whole Ralph Lauren room.
Every single thing. The hardware.
I've bought some of his hardware. It was just fabulous.
Givhan: You can just sort of live this Ralph Lauren life.
And it's now become the standard
in the industry. I mean, I don't know
any brand that aspires to just be a clothing brand.
Everybody aspires to be a lifestyle brand.
I think Ralph Lauren legitimately
offers up a lifestyle.
I think of a lot of other brands basically
just offer up a lot of stuff.
And this, this window right here is not gonna go up to the...
ceiling. It's gonna have like an area...
Everything that I have done
has been from my vision of what I would like.
What do I like for my kids? What do I like for my wife?
What do I like for my house?
It was no one telling me, "This is new.
There was no one saying, "Do it." I did it.
Andrew Lauren: All of sudden, he's like, "I gotta do homework."
"'Cause I gotta, I gotta put stuff in my house.
I need napkins."
Every place is a set.
It's my parents' movie.
The house in Bedford, it's an estate.
It feels like you're in England.
And then they found a beautiful place in Colorado.
The beach house in Montauk.
And an apartment in New York.
And then, Jamaica.
Ralph: The beach, western, English.
They conjure up houses.
They conjure up furniture.
I've taken cowboy boots,
and I made them into chairs
on my ranch.
David Lauren: These homes, they're fuel for him.
In these homes, he finds inspiration.
Dylan Lauren: My dad can dream up
these lifestyles,
and create an aesthetic in his surroundings.
It's, it's an emotional thing.
If I come out West and I have a dream about
what these cabins are gonna look like.
Well, if I'm gonna make a cabin,
I want it to have a squeaky door.
Randolph Carter: He feels like things get better with age.
So he brings things from the past into the future.
You could open a cupboard and find
an amazing stereo system inside.
But the old paint's still there.
He's timeless.
But he's definitely
living in the now.
With Ralph Lauren,
while the mythology does indeed
kind of meld into the reality,
it's because the mythology comes from the reality.
Most of us will never be on a thousand-acre Colorado ranch.
But you can experience all of it
through Ralph Lauren.
(upbeat orchestral music plays)
Look at those trees.
Sheila Metzner: Just looking at his life, and his work,
they're one.
It's completely
autobiographical.
He's completely sharing his interests,
and his life,
and it's positive.
Does art imitate life?
Or does life imitate art?
With Ralph, there's no separation.
(indistinct chattering)
Ralph: I'm that guy in the movie.
And my wife is the girl in the movie.
It starts out with a fantasy. A dream.
And it ends up as part of your life.
When you're out West, you think about the trees and the colors,
architecture, and the plains.
They're inspiring to me.
David Lauren: When he's in Colorado,
and he's coming down from a long year of hard work,
he gets out there, and he just sits down,
and he looks at the mountains.
He has a quietness about him.
but it's almost because he's absorbing everything
and he's listening a lot.
You know, my dad's like a real, down-to-earth family guy.
-Okay. -All right, so here's the question...
You know, when we're together, we're watching movies,
we're, you know, hanging out, having hamburgers and hotdogs.
-David Lauren: No, this is fun. -Whoo!
Andrew Lauren: We have a very tight-knit family
that stayed together and played together.
Dylan Lauren: Nice shot!
-He's sizing up the competition. -David Lauren: My dad is loose and easy.
And he's funny.
He puts on a pair of sunglasses,
he gets in a car, and a character starts to emerge.
(Frank Sinatra singing "I've Got the World on a String")
♪ I've got the world on a string ♪
♪ Sittin' on a rainbow ♪
Andrew Lauren: And, you know, he'll be dressed
according to the car, and the color.
And the look, and the lifestyle.
♪ What a world ♪
♪ What a life, I'm in love ♪
Andrew Lauren: We'd go for a long drive and then we'd come home.
And he would squeeze the orange juice.
My mom would make the pancakes.
And then, uh, we'd put on Sinatra.
He'd start singing with a wooden spoon.
♪ Can't you see I'm in love ♪
Andrew Lauren: You know, for a few seconds, you think,
"Ol' Blue Eyes" is in the room.
♪ As long as I hold the string ♪
Dylan Lauren: Whenever he puts on his white tuxedo,
his dinner jacket,
he is Frank Sinatra. He's Cary Grant.
And he gets out there, and he, you know,
he has these moves.
And when we dance, he's spinning me around,
like we're Fred and Ginger.
♪ Sittin' on a rainbow ♪
Dylan Lauren: He really knows how to work it
and become the personality.
♪ What a world, what a life ♪
My name is Bond.
James Bond! Aah. Aah!
-(laughs) -♪ I got the world on a string ♪
♪ Sittin' on a rainbow ♪
Dylan Lauren: He is very playful
when he's in a crowd that he is close to.
♪ What a world ♪
♪ Man, this is the life ♪
♪ Hey now ♪
♪ I'm so in love ♪
(engine revving)
Brown: Ralph always, I think,
identified with Steve McQueen.
That was The Wild Bunch part of Ralph.
But I think his real, kind of,
soul hero was always Cary Grant.
Diane von Furstenberg: Ralph Lauren always wanted to be Paul Newman.
And always wanted to be a cowboy.
Karl Lagerfeld: He looks good as a cowboy.
I like, for him.
I would be ridiculous. He's not.
Allen: Ralph gets to play Ralph Lauren.
And Ralph is exactly what he wants to play.
He's good-looking. He's a hero.
He can wear any of that stuff.
The evening clothes,
or the cowboy clothes.
And he looks great.
Stewart: He's a handsome man.
He photographs very well.
He's it. He's Ralph Lauren.
And he's the face of the brand.
Andrew Lauren: Looking back at those pictures,
you know, you can see the origins of this brand.
In some ways ,
the brand is iconic for those great images
that are ingrained in people's heads.
Emmanuelle Alt: He has a very strong DNA.
And this is like, the gift.
The absolute gift for a brand. Definitely.
Burns: Public figure who's in his own ads,
who lives his own lifestyle.
is also a very shy person.
And so it's important
to make a distinction between the mythology
that he has spent his entire life creating for others,
because he wished to have that for himself.
And the real person.
But there's not that much daylight
uh, between them.
(horns honking)
-Do you like the belt? -Klein: Designers,
when we were all coming up,
just thought about collections.
Fashion.
Ralph was thinking about his brand.
No one else thought about that.
He just separated himself
and his company from the fashion business.
Because he was creating his own world.
I think the thing that had to be so frustrating for him
was to create the lifestyle fantasy,
and then walk into a department store,
and see that it was in this terrible,
awfully lit environment,
styled on a mannequin in the wrong way,
and poof!
There went the dream and the fantasy
that he was trying to bring into people's lives.
I felt that there was a need to create
and do what I believed would Ralph-- was Ralph Lauren.
And Polo, in, in, in a much larger scale.
And I saw this building on 72nd Street
that has this mansion-like feeling.
And I said, "This is what I want."
(upbeat piano music plays)
Randolph Carter: The mansion was like a big, Hollywood set.
He could create the world
exactly the way he wanted to.
So when people walked in,
it wasn't about buying. It was about an experience.
Traub: Opening day, he took us through a store...
with a grand staircase, Oriental carpet.
A huge portrait of an English gentleman
right on the landing.
He pointed to it and said,
"That's Grandpa Lifshitz."
I thought the store was terrific.
And I said, "How is it doing?"
He said, "I think it's doing fine."
Klein: He was the first designer
to open up retail stores.
He met with a lot of resistance from department stores.
Because those people thought he would be in competition.
He knew, and he told them,
"Your business will grow because of my free-standing stores."
And he was absolutely right.
Foley: Rhinelander changed
the structure of fashion to a tremendous degree.
Because up until Ralph Lauren opened that Rhinelander store,
designer-vertical retail was not a thing.
And Ralph Lauren had the audacity,
and it was audacious, to open this amazing store
on Madison Avenue, a few blocks from Bloomingdale's.
That was shocking.
So, a lot of people would say in the press, they'd say,
"Well, was Bloomingdale's gonna drop Ralph Lauren? Is..."
Well, Bloomingdale's didn't drop Ralph Lauren.
They increased their order. They doubled their order.
Givhan: I don't think you can overstate
the impact that he had
on the way that designers retailed their brand.
It's sort of performance art in which you can participate.
It's a stage set,
in which everything is for sale.
Cohen: The store not only had the clothes,
but saddles. You know, riding crops,
I mean, I don't know what to do with a riding crop or a saddle.
I want, you know, I want a pair of socks.
But it made me feel good. It meant, "This is my store.
"My kind of people come here.
Equestrians." You know, right?
Talley: Oh, I might like to look like that.
I might want to have that tweed.
I may want to have that riding boot.
I might want to have that horse.
Well, I don't have a stable,
but I'll go get the bit, the riding boots,
and I'll look really snappy. It's jaunty.
You always have something in a Ralph Lauren look,
that pivots what you feel about yourself.
Which can give you confidence.
Even a Polo shirt is aspirational.
Rainbow colors.
Who would not want to aspire to that dream?
Jason Wu: I moved to America; I wanted the Polo shirt.
And that as an immigrant for me was what America was.
By buying a shirt,
you can all of a sudden be part of that club.
Kanye West: I needed a way to set myself apart.
What would be my magician's, uh, cloak?
And it was the Polo shirt. (laughs)
It said that I could, like,
travel from the South Side of Chicago
to the beaches of Montauk.
Robin: The longing that he taps into
is about belonging.
It's about feeling that you have
not just attained some kind of personal success,
but social success,
uh, cultural success.
Burns: And so then, it isn't just him speaking
to the people who already have it.
It's speaking to people who want to have it.
And that's his story, too.
People know his story.
They know that this is not a guy
who was born wealthy.
Um, you know, he's self-made.
But because his narrative
has been so rooted in this very WASP-y look,
there's been this sense that
everyone in that world has also looked very WASP-y,
And that hasn't really been the case.
Wool hat, with the horsey.
This is actually the retro, reissue stuff.
It was a little cold outside.
Always Lo socks.
And then, you're not gonna catch me without my Polo drawers on.
Givhan: These guys brought this really rich, interesting
context to the brand that wasn't there.
We took their style, and we've made it our own.
The Lo Lifes were formed in 1988 in Brooklyn.
Not too many people say "Polo."
It's always referred to as "Lo."
We were always into hip-hop culture.
And the fashion of graffiti,
break dancing, DJing, and everything.
And Polo became an obsession for us.
They look like mannequins from the store,
how much stuff they had on.
And I knew how much this stuff cost.
These guys were wearing like $400 jackets,
with $300 boots.
Howl: Like everybody else,
we wanted the finer things in life.
But a lot of people felt the clothes weren't made
for us in the ghetto.
We were, we were poor, you know?
And I didn't have no other way of really getting the clothes.
I'm gonna take it.
♪ We don't have to buy shit, take what I want ♪
♪ Everything is my shit ♪
Howl: You go on boosting missions with a couple of guys,
who can walk in the store and come out with anything.
Down the leg, down the back,
in the shirt, in the shirt, in the sleeve.
And when we would come back to our neighborhoods
wearing these clothes, you look like somebody.
You felt like somebody.
Beckford: It was a way of saying that you made it.
Y ou were successful.
Because it was so regal. It was so royal. It was...
You know, it was the, the top of the top.
♪ Polo Legend like Manolo went over the limit ♪
♪ The loco livin', twistin' ♪
Givhan: When rap and hip-hop embraced Ralph Lauren,
they were essentially saying that we're gonna take this,
this symbol of what it means to be a success in America.
We're gonna turn it on its head a little bit,
and we're gonna sort of wear it on our own terms.
Howl: Ralph Lifshitz came from the Bronx.
He pursued the American dream.
It's what we did.
This was our way of seeing America
further than the last stop on the train.
-Ralph: I like this. -Man: Black. Yeah.
I still like this.
Beyond the glamour of fashion,
there is the reality of making a product,
selling it to the stores, getting it delivered on time.
And then next year. What are you gonna do next season?
That's what I was looking for. The offbeat thing that doesn't...
Doing one collection is painful.
It's painful. It's not easy.
And my days are distracted.
I'm not just sitting there,
designing a dress.
I'm running from an ad meeting
to a, to a board meeting,
to another meeting.
David Lauren: When you're in this industry,
you do have to keep pushing forward.
You gotta get out there and you're gonna be better every season.
And he wants to get better with age.
So he works harder.
This seems like a fashion image.
Building this company, I believed that there's...
One person can't do it all.
From the financial end of it,
to the artistic end of it.
It's, it's a team.
One person can't be the great artist,
and the great genius, financial genius,
and the Wall Street genius, and the...
I, I might be the only guy. But... (laughs)
(laughter in background)
What's in a brand name?
A Ralph Lauren Polo brand?
About $767,000,000.
That's how much was raised in yesterday's initial public offering
of stock in Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation.
Stewart: Going public just made him more famous.
Ring that bell on the New York Stock Exchange.
It's a very exciting day.
And then your stock is traded,
and then you have to deal with your shareholders.
Year after year after year.
And you're under a tremendous amount of more scrutiny
than you were before.
Traub: He had a great concern
that something would go out of the business
when it became public.
And even though he clearly knew
he could make a lot of money,
the decision weighed on his mind
whether it was a good or bad decision.
Vanessa Friedman: Going public is very complicated
for any fashion company.
It places an undue burden on,
you know, a creative business which is always gonna show
kind of ebbs and flows
in terms of how people respond to new products.
-So that's like the star. -So you got, so you have, Ralph, you have got this...
Ralph: You may not totally be free
to express what you want.
-This is what I want. -And yet shareholders
invest in your business because they believe in you,
and they want to see growth.
I don't know all of you,
but I would like to know...
But as you get bigger,
it's harder to control the sales.
It's hard to control the design,
and it's harder and harder to control the company.
You have to choose
some sophisticated people financially,
to help you grow.
Sometimes it works.
And sometimes it doesn't.
Wintour: A lot of people have come and gone
quite quickly over there, because
they have tried to introduce, um,
a new way of thinking, and that's...
That's not possible for Ralph.
Ralph believes in what he has created.
He believes in the Ralph Lauren
way of doing business. And it's worked.
And he's, he's not gonna move off that--
He's not getting off that train.
Ralph: I decided to go public
because I wanted to have a bigger business.
The whole world was there,
and I felt like I had something to say
that was international.
(upbeat jazz music plays)
Talley: The first store that he opened in Paris
was the talk of the town.
And now, there's a Ralph Lauren store everywhere.
In Milan. There are stores in London.
There are stores everywhere.
Russell: He has created this idea
of American style,
and what that means around the world.
Alt: I really love the fact that he celebrates
his country.
It's very relative to what
his vision of America.
And, uh, it's very exotic for us,
maybe, the French people.
Wu: The fact that Ralph Lauren's international name
is as important as the French and the Italians
is very significant for American fashion.
Wintour: When you talk to young designers,
and you ask them which designers they most admire,
and who they might like to meet,
there's two names that come back again and again.
It doesn't matter what corner of the globe that you're in.
It's Karl Lagerfeld, and it's Ralph Lauren.
For me, it's the American designer
who represents America and American fashion best
for the rest of the world.
David Lauren: When you went to Japan,
crowds were assembling to take his picture.
He's seen as an ambassador of American culture,
and he reminds people of what's great about our country.
That's their slice of America.
Having that T-shirt
is their ownership of United States.
I think if we have anything close to a national designer,
it's Ralph Lauren.
Hillary Rodham Clinton: When the Star-Spangled Banner
was tattering to shreds,
I reached out to Ralph, and next thing I knew,
he was pledging $13 million
to repair our Star-Spangled Banner.
It was literally the flag that was flying
when, um, our National Anthem was written.
And it's because he got it.
He understands icons, because he is one.
Friedman: You couldn't grow up in America in the '80s onwards
and not know the name of Ralph Lauren.
He is the classic American,
mythological, entrepreneurial success story.
You know, in any industry.
Diane Sawyer: The official uniform
of the US Olympic team has been unveiled.
Announcer (over PA): Ralph Lauren will throw out tonight's
ceremonial first pitch.
Ralph: Being able to pitch at Yankee Stadium
was unbelievable.
-(crowd cheering) -Announcer (over PA): Thank you, Ralph.
It is a key to our city.
Reporter: Ralph Lauren will become the first American designer
to be knighted by the queen.
Birrittella: I think Ralph has won every design award out there.
-(camera shutter clicking) -Thank you very, very much.
Birrittella: But it was the Lifetime Achievement Award
that Audrey Hepburn gave to Ralph
that was the high.
The high of-- The high of the highs.
Tonight, we salute Ralph Lauren,
for his contributions to American style,
design, and culture.
And to the way he has added beauty,
comfort,
and dreams
to our lives.
(applause)
I think this looks very good.
Birrittella: Ralph knows what he's achieved.
But he still comes from that place of hunger.
He still wants to create and excel.
He doesn't look at the past success
and say, "Okay. I'm done."
Burns: He's never satisfied .
He's restless.
And there's always the next season.
There's always the next collection.
There is nothing to be rested on.
And the awards and the accolades
are not as important as the thing you're working on now.
I don't like the belt. That's, that-- I, I really don't like.
-You don't like the belt. -No.
I don't like these sneakers as much.
Something is not sharp enough. I don't know what it is. I don't know.
Foley: He has been able to stay
very, very true to his aesthetic,
while progressing that aesthetic.
Which is one of the hardest things to do,
if not the hardest thing to do in fashion.
Okay.
Wintour: He remains within his own framework.
But Ralph is still in there,
pushing himself.
Always questioning, he's always looking, he's always thinking.
And I think that he's been concerned sometimes
that he's not been hot enough.
But he says very clearly,
"I don't want to be too hot.
"And I don't want to be too cold.
"I just want to exist.
I want to be like Nike, or I want to be like Coca-Cola."
And I think he's achieved that.
Goldberger: Ralph Lauren has become so established in the culture,
that it could be the object of irony.
But that doesn't mean
it was created with ironic intent by him.
Ralph Lauren does not have an ironic bone in his body.
He really believes all this stuff.
He really believes how beautiful the world can be,
if we would only let it be so.
The thing about Ralph Lauren's world
is that it's so benignly aspirational.
He has really built his entire empire on this idea,
anyone can enter the fantasy American dream.
And I don't think the American dream ever goes away.
(Tony Bennett singing "Stranger in Paradise")
♪ Take my hand ♪
♪ I'm a stranger in paradise ♪
Givhan: But I do think that it evolves and it shifts.
And our understanding of it changes over time.
And I don't know that his understanding of it,
I don't know that that's changing.
And I think it's a problem for a brand,
that I think is so much more than just any old fashion brand.
♪ That's a danger... ♪
Friedman: His real adherence to
these narratives of America
that are core to his brand
can get a little stale,
particularly at a time when I think a lot of people
who have not felt included in a lot of these narratives,
are suddenly finding a voice,
and demanding that you kind of rewrite
how we have thought about all these stories.
And, you know, this is not a brand that rewrites.
Ralph: The question is, how do you move forward?
How do you develop newness?
And how do you stay Ralph Lauren and not lose your identity?
(indistinct chattering)
But I stayed true to myself.
And some of the criticism was very painful.
It's like, "My God. Maybe I'm not good.
Maybe I think I'm good, but I'm not."
Look how nice that looks.
I've gone by my gut.
Not everything is genius.
And, yes, I would love everyone to love it.
But I'm a big boy, and I've lived through critics...
from day one.
And I think that if I listen to the critics,
I would have quit.
Let's put that on there.
This is my 50th year.
So think of this.
Fifty years, back and forth, on the runway,
saying, "Oh, my God. What am I gonna do next year?"
We're searching for what's been done, or what's not been done.
Birrittella: These are the pictures.
Ralph: You're rolling the dice again and again and again.
This collection is just a culmination of everything
that you've always believed in.
Ralph: This is not about every year.
This is just now.
And I wanted this collection to be
like it was my last.
People say, "Ralph,
you don't worry about your shows anymore. You don't care about--"
I say, "Are you kidding? I'm more nervous today than I've ever been."
(indistinct chattering)
Friedman: I was completely, like, boggled by it.
I mean, I like, my eyes were falling out of my head
because everywhere I turned there was some, you know, extraordinary person.
Anne Hathaway, Oprah Winfrey,
Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg.
You know, every American designer practically.
And everyone was there just to be happy for Ralph
and be proud of Ralph.
I honestly, like, I thought it was wonderful.
Ralph: You're never sure that you got it right.
You think you got it right. You feel it in your gut.
But I'm nervous until the last moment.
(upbeat orchestral music plays)
Givhan: Ralph Lauren's place in fashion history is secure.
He represents something that is more than just a bunch of clothes.
Friedman: It was a very big tent embrace of everybody.
You know, colors, ages, sizes.
Like, everyone can be a part of my world.
He took fantasies of what America should be
and made entire worlds out of them,
over half a century.
(applause)
(applause continues)
Wintour: I think sometimes
he can't quite believe that it's happened.
Sometimes,
he's still that little boy,
not quite believing that, you know, "I am Ralph Lauren."
(applause)
Hardison: That hug.
That to me said, no matter who's in that room,
no matter who's shiny, who's successful,
you always go back to someone who really knows who you were,
and who you came from, and where you came from.
Chastain: At the very end of the show,
he always goes to his family.
And I think that's so touching.
Because you know where the priority lies there.
You have to have a full life
to be able to create. You can't create from emptiness.
And I think Ralph has a very full,
beautiful, loving life.
Ralph: When I saw the children playing
and people from all over,
and the mixes of lives and worlds...
I mean, I was emotional.
It was everything that I believed in about life.
Fifty years.
(birds chirping)
(soft orchestral music plays)
Ralph: I'm very excited about my work.
I feel vital and creative.
And I'm looking forward to the future.
I care about what I do and I love what I do.
You have to keep working.
I'm living the life I dreamt about living.
And I enjoy creating my own world.
But as you get older,
you don't need all the things you thought you needed.
You need the good things.
Warmth.
The smell of the country mornings.
And the way the fences look.
The color of the barn.
And life is wonderful.
When I built my house in Bedford,
my mother said, "What do you need this for?"
I said, "Mom, I want this so I can have that little house
"down the hill with a little red barn.
That's for my soul."
(birds chirping)
Sometimes you have to fulfill your dreams
to know what your real dream is about.
The real dream is family,
children,
having peace.
(upbeat orchestral music playing)