Word: laurene
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...very next year Lauren struck out on his own, with $50,000 in backing from Norman Hilton, a Manhattan clothing manufacturer. He began producing an entire menswear line, including wide-collar shirts and wide-lapel suits, that was more flamboyant than the contemporary Ivy League look yet not as loud as the psychedelic style of the same era. Before long, Lauren had 30 employees helping to promote and sell his fast-expanding Polo collection. Chic department stores like Bloomingdale's showcased his collections, and the fashion press took notice. "He's acquired a certain reputation for clothes that...
...perhaps inevitable that Lauren would eventually try his hand in the challenging womenswear market, but his touch proved less sure there. His first tailored shirts for women, in 1971, were a success. Nonetheless, his initial attempt at a full line of womenswear in 1972, inspired partly by British riding clothes, was deemed too unsubtly imitative of menswear lines. Critics were startled and yet intrigued. "A phenomenon to bewilder anthropologists," sniffed The New Yorker...
...soon the Lauren look began to catch on. The designer quickly became something of a champion for well-bred suburbanites who felt manipulated by European couturiers. "Nobody is impressed with elaborate clothes anymore," he declared in 1974. "A girl who is solid doesn't want to be known as a fashion lady." Today his quietly elegant womenswear collections bring in about $210 million at retail...
...Lauren achieved something of pop-star status during the 1970s. It started after he began displaying his engaging smile in advertisements in 1974, when Saks Fifth Avenue asked him to appear in a print ad for the store's Polo boutique. Lauren, 5 ft. 5 or so, projected considerable well-tanned sex appeal. In the same year he designed the male wardrobe for the opulent remake of The Great Gatsby, which starred Robert Redford. In 1977 Lauren's creations attracted a further celebrity following when Diane Keaton adopted them in a layered, tomboyish look for Woody Allen's Annie Hall...
...Lauren oversees his empire and its 1,000 employees in a ten-floor warren of offices that occupy a narrow, prewar building on Manhattan's West 55th Street, about 15 blocks north of the hectic garment district. The decor of Lauren's headquarters suggests the backstage of a theater: cramped and slightly eccentric, with forest green walls and a bowl of M&M's on a table in the reception room. Lauren's personal office contains some of his favorite props: a wood-burning fireplace, a fleet of toy racing cars, family photographs and piles of fabric swatches. He often...