Word: ralph
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...close attention to detail. He does so by lavishing time and care on his image- making advertisements, which spread the message of his design principles. As part of that studied approach, Lauren prefers lavish magazine spreads to television commercials, which he views as too fleeting to impart his message. "Ralph has some of the best advertising in the business because it sets a mood, it evokes a life-style," says an ad director for a major fashion magazine...
...Young Ralph was preoccupied with basketball, stickball and the exploits of Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, but he started showing a flair for clothes in his early teens. "The kids I grew up with were wearing leather motorcycle jackets like Marlon Brando," he recalls. "But at the same time I saw there was a collegiate side of the world. I was inspired by it. I was always very preppie." Klein remembers that Lauren cut a distinctive figure in the neighborhood by mixing olive-drab Army clothes with tweeds. At 15, Ralph got his first fashion commission: to design red satin...
...Lauren's older brother Jerry, now the head of Polo's menswear design department, who suggested when Ralph was 16 that the siblings change their surname. "Lifshitz was a burden," Jerry recalls. "I was in the Air Force reserve, and I got tired of being on the defensive at mail call with somebody fooling around with the sound of my name. It was silly to live with it. It wasn't some family dynasty." Ralph and Jerry rattled off potential names to each other and settled almost randomly on Lauren, which sounded euphonious to them...
...time, accepting returned garments in a budget-price department store, to earn money to buy classically cut clothes at Manhattan's Brooks Bros. In his high school yearbook, Lauren confidently listed his ambition as "millionaire." The entry was a gag, he claims today, but his brother Jerry remembers that Ralph had a "constant urge to make something happen. He was always reaching for more...
...Ralph tried a stint at New York's City College but decided to drop out, at least partly, he says, because it was an aesthetic letdown. "There was no wonderful campus with boys and girls wearing V-neck sweaters," he explains, as though he still feels he missed something in life...