Word: ralph
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...garments have as firm a claim on the title of fashion classic as the polo shirt, or, as Ralph Lauren calls it, the Polo shirt. The exact origin of the knitted-cotton, soft-collar shirt with a floppy tail is unknown, but its widely recorded debut came in 1893, when it was worn by polo players at the swank Hurlingham Club, near Buenos Aires. Compared with traditional British polo wear of the era, the new tops were cooler and less restrictive. In 1920 one of Argentina's polo stars, Lewis Lacey, opened a sports shop in Buenos Aires, where...
Fashion Designer Ralph Lauren grew up a long way from all the things he really admired: hand-tailored clothes, manor houses, sports cars, fine horses and manicured lawns. But call it a yearning process: as an outsider to that world, Bronx-born Lauren dreamed up his own brand of gentility and style. Now he has managed to create an image and a company that have nearly cornered the market for supplying today's would-be Gatsbys. Shunning hipness and flamboyance, Lauren cultivates the up-and-coming customer's appreciation for things and dreams that last...
...American life. He is a very stabilizing influence in American fashion." The determined dreamer from the Bronx has become a special kind of design star, whose imagination is less a source of amazement than of security for his still growing audience. Says up-and-coming Designer Zack Carr: "Ralph Lauren is respected for his consistent style and intrinsic quality year after year, and I appreciate that." So, evidently, do millions of customers who have come to believe that Polo is not just an elite pastime but a seductive style for the good life...
...vision of the lush life, Lauren is building an ever larger retail network. The designer now sells his products in 48 franchised Polo shops, 132 department store boutiques and 16 discount outlets. In April he opened what his company calls the world's largest one-designer store, Polo/ Ralph Lauren, in a 20,000-sq.-ft. renovated mansion on Manhattan's tony Madison Avenue shopping strip. The Polo palace, which is the first retail store Lauren has owned outright, represents a gamble that one designer can produce enough strong-selling goods to support a department store-size emporium...
...more important things to follow than fashion trends. Lauren loyalists sing of simple virtues: comfy elegance, durability, the avoidance of visual shock. They know they can depend on Lauren for a certain smart sameness, a look at once sporty and restrained. "No one understands his customer as truly as Ralph does," says Donna Karan, another leading U.S. designer. "He creates designs that match his philosophy, and he never loses his integrity." Says Grace Mirabella, editor in chief of Vogue: "The thing I admire most is that he stays so highly focused. He doesn't do one thing that...