Very Ralph (2019) - full transcript

It is perhaps the ultimate accolade,

not merely to have your name known,

but to have it become an adjective.

Memories feel Proustian,

music sounds Mozartian,

and clothing, linens, furniture

and even whole rooms

can be very Ralph Lauren.

Dearest Ralph,

as a designer, you conjure up

all things I most care about.

The country, misty mornings,

summer afternoons,

great open spaces, horses,

cornfields, vegetable gardens,

fireplaces,

and Jack Russell terriers.

Your story is not about trends,

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.

VERY RALPH

Everything in this room is a mix

of everything that I love.

They're gifts from friends,

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 oughta 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 asked "are you a fashion

designer", "no, I hate fashion".

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.

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.

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.

Ralph had this special thing

that rose to the surface.

He had such a great creativity

and imagination.

I always felt a little special about

who I was.

Was I Eddie Fisher ?

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.

He had a natural affinity

for finding things

and putting himself together

that made him special.

"Where did you find that, Ralph ?"

Maybe he'd find a local store

that had an old army jacket

and he'd wear that.

Or maybe he'd grab a jacket

and was stylish, and it was like boom.

Everybody looked around and said:

"That's great ! That's cool."

He just had style.

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 that he has

the courage to walk around like that.

He had a very personal look.

When I was fourteen, 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. I hardly could

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 that 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 or 17 years old.

And they took care of us

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

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.

Thank you.

Want to take a look ?

When models walk into my office,

they're 18 years old,

no sophistication.

- Where are you from ?

- I'm from Germany.

All of a sudden they become

something else.

The star of your movie.

- Hi.

- The light went out.

- I think she's good.

- Yup, she's good.

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.

That's what my wife looks like.

My mother is his muse.

She has a great sense

of personal style and simplicity.

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's sort of a tomboy jock

and elegant woman.

My mom walks into a room

and she just looks natural

and her dress is flowing

and he says:

"Wow, you look beautiful."

And then he'll go into the office

and says:

"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.

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 was thought I was being

very clever and coy,

but I wasn't. I was innocent

and I said what I felt.

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".

We were children.

We were living there in the Bronx.

We were still kids.

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 that was the beginning.

We had a train above our heads,

the L.

It was like a movie.

We would hear the noise.

It was like

"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

turquoise princess phone in my house.

But we loved the phone

cause it was so modern.

And we'd go down

to Greenwich Village

and there was a store that sold furs.

And they sold 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 loved at the time.

His father was an artist.

And he was able to do faux bois,

which is fake wood.

He painted it.

The walls of the living room were wood,

but not "really wood".

They were painted.

And we painted

all the little trim in the house

and they were wrought iron

and we made 'em like gold.

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.

You like that ? You want a bag ?

Like a very cool bag ?

The one with the studs was...

It doesn't have to be a ponytail,

but there's something chic...

When you see her hair up,

you want it more dramatic.

Yeah, let me see that.

That looks beautiful.

The bag looks a little rugged.

I didn't know what my story

was going to be.

I didn't say I'm gonna be

this great fashion designer,

or whatever you wanna call it.

But even as a young man,

I had a story.

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.

"Finding the right item ready-made often

proves impossible for Ralph Lauren."

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 a salesman.

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 wide tie."

I would go to a tiemaker

and have them make ties for me.

Why I wanted the wide tie ?

Maybe I saw it in old movies

and they looked great.

Maybe it was on Fred Astaire

and I liked the look.

And I said: "I want that."

But I didn't know where to buy it.

I saw 'em in the movies,

but I didn't see 'em in the stores.

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 neckwear.

And my dad helped Ralph

make swatch cards.

And 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.

I called the brand Polo because

I always loved sports.

And I thought well, I couldn't call it

baseball or basketball.

And Polo sounded sort of sporty.

It sounds like a master plan,

it wasn't a master plan.

I didn't think about that. I said this

is what I wanna do. I like these ties,

I'm gonna make them wider,

I think they're gonna like it.

I brought it over to Bloomingdale's.

Because Bloomingdale's was

the entrée 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."

"Would you make it a little narrower,

and would you take your label off ?"

"We wanna 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.

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.

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.

When he told me,

it got me kind of nervous.

But I wrote him a letter

and 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."

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.

The Polo Tie, by Ralph Lauren,

all linen in 10 smashing colors.

12,50 at Bloomingdale's,

the Father's Day store.

When you have a four-inch tie

instead of a 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 have 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.

And I found a whole world of ideas.

The timing was interesting.

The world was changing.

Fashion was happening for men.

It was the early '60's when men

wore a uniform.

There was just very, very prescribed

ways of dressing.

It was the '60's Mad Men era.

Men's clothes were

still very, very conservative.

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 ?

We gotta make a shirt.

Gotta make a suit.

I found a suit maker,

a shirt maker.

All of a sudden, they're buying

the ties, they're loving the ties.

What else you make Ralph ?

I have shirts.

He was doing

very flamboyant shirtings

and these wide lapel suits.

And 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 '30's.

And I immediately thought of Gatsby.

"The look comes straight off

Gatsby's lawn."

He started with, you know, the kind

of clothes 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.

When I was starting out,

the designer name

was not appealing to men.

They were used to buying in certain

companies, certain brand stores.

But designers were for the women

and the tailor was for the man.

As long as it has

the folds it in, Jerry.

Ralph 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 want to take off

your hat, take off your hat.

He has a very critical eye.

And Buffy Birrittella was so attuned

to him

that she knew exactly

what he wanted.

The attention to detail,

whether it's a shirt

or a shoulder on a jacket,

those were things that he trained

my eye on very, very early on.

For chairman of the board,

I don't know.

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

that made me see clothes

in a whole other way.

I knew I had to work for him.

Buffy was my right-arm.

She understood the clothes.

I showed her a jacket, she got it.

Her eye was good.

He's very competitive.

He's 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,

I can't sell to you anymore."

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 is right there.

He had front stage.

Always had.

Ralph had the whole picture.

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.

There was a certain point

in the very early days,

where Ralph almost lost

the whole business.

In the early 70's,

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.

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.

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 all white suit.

And I was walking in the rain

and I said to myself:

"I'm going to 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.

I saved some little money.

I put everything that I had

back into the company.

And 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 shirt.

The designer as a business.

You think you have to convince me ?

I'm sitting here like:

"It's gonna be hard to convince us."

What's strange about this ?

The only thing strange is we should've

been there two or five years ago.

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.

Ralph knew exactly

what he was doing.

He had a sixth sense to know

what the world needs.

I'm in the business of fashion.

It sounds like a frivolous thing.

And not important.

But I think it's important that people

express who they are.

Fashion has to be desirable

and give somebody some kind

of emotional reaction to it.

And Ralph sees that

and understands that

and he gives them the whole package.

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

the tweed jacket or a hacking jacket

or a specific type of trench coat

like Rick's trench coat

from Casablanca

or his white double-breasted

dinner jacket,

it doesn't exist anywhere.

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.

He has the kind of things I like.

The tweed jackets

and those kind of shirts

and corduroy trousers.

But he doesn't dress me. I've been

dressing myself since I was 48.

I've always thought of him as more

than just a fashion designer

or a businessman,

I thought of him as a cultural force,

that he changed the way that we all

looked at 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.

I didn't want to wear

the same suits my father wore.

My father had one suit

and 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.

Then suddenly,

there was this guy Ralph Lauren.

There is 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 said: "Ralph, I'd love to wear

what you're wearing,"

"but I can't. I don't know.

it's not me."

"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 aging,

that have a background

of lifestyle behind it.

What I feel I've given is a certain

romantic fantasy to the clothes.

He finds beauty in every aspect

of American culture,

whether it be Native American,

whether it be cowboy,

whether it's the Ivy League culture.

And he finds the, sort of,

nobility in each of those

and he created 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 that the guy

that is the Gl"

"or the guy that is the cowboy,

or the guy that's the working man"

"he can be just as cool

as an aristocrat."

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.

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.

It wouldn't be Ralph Lifshitz Polo.

That wouldn't work.

A lot of people thought that Ralph

had changed his name

because he wanted

to be more WASPy.

Absolutely not true.

I am the person who created

the name change.

Throughout life, having a name

like L-I-F-S-H-I-T-Z,

Lifshitz, was a tough thing

to live with.

Ralph and I both went

to the Rabbi Israel Salanter Yeshiva.

And in Yeshiva, even though their

names were Goldberg and Silverberg

and Silverstein and Cohen

and Lifshitz,

somebody still said: "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'd 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."

When I read that,

the reference to his name,

I think there was a smidgen

of anti-Semitism there.

It was like: "Who's this little Jew

to tell us how to dress up ?"

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,

that's his real name.

Elbow jab, "he's just a Lifshitz".

And I resented it.

I said: "No ! This isn't something bad,

this is good !"

And I likened Ralph to the Hollywood

moguls of the thirties and the forties.

L.B. Mayer, who was the head

of the 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're 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.

HOLIDAY, 1938

And that's the eye of the outsider.

That's what Ralph has.

I thought that 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 a frame now

and you'd be a masterpiece.

My dad was a product of the movies.

He grew up wanting to be like

the stars on the silver screen.

He loved the style.

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 had aspirations to not only

dress the part,

but be the man and move past

his upbringing

and become somebody special.

Movies had a great impact on me

because they opened a window

to a world that I didn't grow up with.

The idealization of the WASPy

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.

I was always inspired

by the '30's or '40's movies.

Movies made somewhere

around the Depression.

They always reminded me of happy,

make-believe glamour.

Those movies have always made me

feel good.

You could go to the movies for

ten 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.

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 dressing the part.

Ralph Lauren is not interested

in stirring the pot.

He's not interested in the nitty gritty.

In another era, he would have been one

of the great producers in Hollywood.

He would've 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.

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.

I always wanted a beach house.

I had no money,

so Ricky and I would just walk

around the beach and say:

"If you could have anyway you'd want

to live, how would you want to live ?"

This is such a beautiful spot.

I have a very hectic life

and when I get away,

I need to get away where I have

the simplicity of life.

And I do feel

that my family comes first.

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.

My children were always part

of everything.

We weren't very social because

I have 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:

"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,

there are parties on the weekends.

And all of a sudden,

we were not invited to anything.

I'd see cars parked in front

of all these houses,

people going to parties,

to dinner parties.

"I guess they forgot about us, Ricky."

Sometimes you want to be invited,

but you don't necessarily want to go.

But when they stop inviting you,

then there's a problem.

Ralph totally believes

in the importance of family.

It's rare to see him out and about.

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.

Do we have any more

of those dresses ?

Do we have any more dresses

than this ? 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.

And it kept coming.

But I didn't think I would ever do

women's clothes.

I'd lose the color here.

I want to see how this could look

a little sexier,

a little more evening.

Because it looks a looks a little young.

I love the way we look here.

Menswear is easier for me

because I'm a man.

I can say that I want those pants.

But when I'm doing women's clothes,

I feel like I've stretched.

I need it to be more sophisticated.

Let's see without your hat.

I think you can fix this up,

but the white skirt bothers me a little.

He knows the fabric,

he knows the silhouette.

She looks sophisticated.

That's what I like.

He knows what he wants to say.

They look a little too overpowered.

He's shown it all

by the people who bring it in.

And he'll go:

"That, that, that, that."

That's beautiful.

It could be day or night.

It depends on what we don't have.

The red could be good.

This is very sophisticated.

Let me see that.

That's good. Let me see that.

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.

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

just don't.

He understands women,

he respects women.

Maybe she doesn't need a matching

belt because of the belt on the jacket.

He celebrates women.

- That's good, that's perfect.

- That's a great mix.

Womenswear really started because

Ricky and I were saying:

"Gosh, those are great men's clothes.

Make 'em smaller."

"We wanna wear them."

With Ricky first, we'd go shopping

and she'd go into a boys store

that had hacking jackets

and so I'd put the jacket on Ricky

and say: "That looks great. I want

that. That's what I wanna do."

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 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.

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 plaque

it should be.

The tailor would go back and make

something 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.

Ralph would stand in front

of the fireplace.

He would talk about the clothes,

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.

The first small show I did

in my offices.

I had never been to a fashion show.

After that show,

I called my staff in,

which was two people, I think.

I said: "I just want you to know that

this is it.

"I want to quit the women's.

I want to leave on top."

"I had a good show and I don't think

I can 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

on Seventh Avenue

and had them sketch the looks

of the girls

and what I thought

they should look like.

And then we made the clothes

based on that.

Back in the 70's and 80's,

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.

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.

He just had this vision

of the Ralph Lauren woman.

Fresh, American, natural,

different than what 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.

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,

he's not about trying

to sell his clothes.

He understands almost

more than anyone I've met

the potency of the American Dream.

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.

And when the ads came in,

it was like an event.

People wanted to see that campaign,

it was as much of a thing

in the culture

as the release

of a new book or film.

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.

If you look at the early ads,

we would go off and shoot

sometimes two weeks at a time.

And we would pack up

all these suitcases.

Men's clothes and the women's clothes

and the children's clothes

and the home collections.

And we'd create,

you know, that world

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 moustache.

We had sisters of somebody

and children of these people.

Ralph would find some,

Bruce would find some.

Buffy would grab

like a piece of jewelry

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.

One of the things that drew

Ralph to Bruce Weber,

Bruce's pictures were very evocative

and very real and very anti-fashion.

Usually, you have an agency

that comes and 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.

When I was on the set,

they would give me all these stories.

"Tim, this is your house.

You just inherited it from your uncle."

"But you try not to let

the other family members know yet."

"And then Isabelle's your wife."

They dress you up

in these beautiful clothes.

By the time you starts shooting,

I mean you really believe this.

I'd pick the girls, I'd pick the guys,

I gave them the background.

It's not even about the clothes.

It really creates

the cinematic vision of a life.

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.

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.

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 wanna believe that too.

Americans are very attached

to our utopian notions.

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.

I think people have sometimes

dismissed Ralph as a marketer

because his advertising campaigns

were so extraordinarily visionary.

You are not just buying

an article of clothing.

You've joined a narrative. And that's

very different than what fashion is.

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.

You opened the magazine, a GQ,

and you saw that it was just like:

"Oh my God,

what is this, who is this ?"

Even I said: "Who is this ?"

This young man comes along,

and I guess it was just

in Ralphs eye.

Tyson had something that was street,

yet elegant. And he was dark

and very handsome.

It was a 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 three,

four thousand dollar suit

in a GQ magazine.

Wall Street guys were looking

at this and CEOs, businessmen,

were looking like: "This suit is nice.

This is really nice."

"I need to go get this."

Ralph has 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 Ralph stood up and did it.

It was a big deal to have

two people of color

be in a nationwide

or worldwide ad campaign.

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 you're kind of on to something.

Ralph has been inspired

by so many things

that he hasn't been confined

to one look.

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 a collection,

I'm thinking of characters

and people and movies and books.

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, and growing up,

and my dreams of future,

everything I've experienced,

everything I've seen.

The creative process to him

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.

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.

If he's got the aviator mood,

he's in a room

and there's Amelia Earhart and there

might even be Katharine Hepburn.

He had done all the research

of the aviator looks.

All of that,

it's all in the mood boards.

These are rooms,

they are the mood rooms.

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, keeps adding

a layer, keeps adding a new color.

It's like building a statue out of clay,

you take these pieces of clay

and then you start to mold it.

Everything is about a story.

It's never about a blouse

or a pair of pants.

He's from the same home town

as Antonio Banderas

He had a vision of the Riviera.

Gerald and Sarah Murphy,

Picasso,

the whole expat American thing

back in the 30's.

Hemingway had an effect.

It's just something to spur you on.

So sometimes that's a whole collection,

Sometimes it's a little piece

of something.

It just takes one spark like that.

A picture, a little raggy piece

of denim and he's off.

It's never a literal thing.

It gives you a sense about the color,

the texture,

the mood of the clothes.

It's about wear-ability,

it's about understatement.

I believe in timelessness

that doesn't go out with the trend,

that doesn't go out with age.

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.

You viscerally respond to it.

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."

We always get nervous

when you go on vacation.

After you've signed off on everything,

maybe Buffy will get a phone call.

"I'm rethinking..."

We started one collection

and we were halfway through it.

Bought sample yardage,

we had walls full of clothes

and sketches.

Ralph came back from the holidays

and said: "It's wrong."

I said: "Wait a minute, I can make it

more sophisticated"

"because I don't wanna

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 wanna do something

beautiful with grey flannel."

We went and we ordered

all new piece goods.

Creme, creme cashmere,

light grey cashmere,

beautiful mauves and pinks.

And it was a scramble.

But we believe in his instincts

and everyone gets on board.

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.

- Yeah, the contrast...

One of the things 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.

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 a 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, 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.

And it's funny today that all the young

guys are talking about

wearing track pants

with suit jackets.

And they're like

this is what's happening right now,

it's all about the adaptability

and about expressing

the relationship

with the urban environment.

Guys, Ralph Lauren

was doing that 35 years ago.

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.

In a way to see how street style would

become the world's uniform.

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.

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.

He really put the world together.

Children, furniture, men's, women's.

The pillows, the sheets,

the blankets.

The duffel bag.

Ralph Lauren was

the very first fashion designer

to design a full home collection.

He took lifestyle and made it

haute style.

He 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's just fabulous.

You can just sort of live

this Ralph Lauren life.

And it's now become the standard

in the industry.

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 a lot of other brands

basically just offer up a lot of stuff.

And this window right here is not

gonna go up to the ceiling.

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.

All of a sudden, he's like:

"I gotta do home ware,"

"cause I've 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.

A beach house in Montauk.

An apartment in New York.

And then, Jamaica.

Beach, Western, English.

They conjure up houses

and they conjure up furniture.

I've taken cowboy boots and I've made

them into chairs on my ranch.

These homes,

they're fuel for him.

In these homes,

he finds inspiration.

My dad can dream up these lifestyles

and create an aesthetic

in his surroundings.

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 the cabin,

I want it to have a squeaky door.

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.

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.

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, the architecture and the plains.

They're inspiring to me.

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 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.

Alright, so here's the question.

And when we're together,

we're watching movies,

we're hanging out having

hamburgers and hot dogs.

This is fun.

We have a very tight-knit family

that stayed together

and played together.

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.

He'll be dressed according

to the car

and the color and the look

and the lifestyle.

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 we'd put on Sinatra.

He'd start singing with a wooden spoon.

You know, for a few seconds, you think

"Old Blue Eyes" is in the room.

Whenever he puts on his white tuxedo

and dinner jacket,

he is Frank Sinatra, he's Cary Grant.

He gets out there

and he has these moves.

When we dance, he's spinning me

around like we're Fred and Ginger.

He really knows how to work it

and become the personality.

My name is Bond. James Bond !

He is very playful when

he's in a crowd that he is close to.

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.

Ralph Lauren always wanted

to be Paul Newman.

And always wanted to be a cowboy.

He looks good as a cowboy.

I like for him.

I would be ridiculous, he's not.

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.

He's a handsome man.

He photographs very well.

He's it. He's Ralph Lauren.

And he's the face of the brand.

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.

He has a very strong DNA,

and this is like the gift,

the absolute gift for a brand.

Definitely.

The 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

between them.

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

was Ralph Lauren and Polo

in a much larger scale.

And I saw this building on 72nd street

that had this mansion-like feeling

and I said: "This is what I want."

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.

Opening day he took us through

the 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".

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 freestanding stores.

And it was absolutely right.

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 said:

"Is Bloomingdale's gonna drop

Ralph Lauren ?"

Well, Bloomingdale's didn't drop

Ralph Lauren,

they increased their order,

they doubled it.

I don't think you can overstate

the impact that he had on the way

that designers retail their brand.

It's sort of performance art

in which you can participate.

It's a stage set,

in which everything is for sale.

The store not only had the clothes,

but saddles,

riding crops. I don't know what to do

with a riding crop or a saddle.

I want a pair of socks.

But it made me feel good.

This is my store. My kind of people

come here. Equestrians, right ?

I might like to look like that,

I might want to have that tweed,

I might want to have that riding boot.

I might want to have that horse.

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 ?

I moved to America

wanting 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.

I needed a way to set myself apart.

What would be my magician's cloak ?

And it was the Polo shirt.

It said that I could travel

from the South Side of Chicago

to the beaches of Montauk.

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,

cultural success.

And so that 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.

He's self-made.

But, because his narrative has been

so rooted in this very WASPy look,

there's been the sense that everyone

in that world

has also looked very WASPy.

And that hasn't really been the case.

Wool hat with the horsey.

This is actually

the retro reissue stuff.

It's a little cold outside.

Always Lo socks.

You're not going to catch me

without my Polo drawers on.

These guys brought this really rich,

interesting context to the brand

that wasn't there.

We took their style

and we 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 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

400 dollar jackets

with 300 dollar boots.

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 poor. You know ?

And I didn't have no other way

of really getting the clothes.

So I'm gonna take it.

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 sleeve.

When we would come back to our

neighborhoods wearing these clothes,

you look like somebody,

you felt like somebody.

It was a way of saying that you made it,

you were successful.

Because it was so regal,

it was so royal,

it was the top of the top.

When rap and hip hop embraced

Ralph Lauren,

they were essentially saying that

we're going to take this symbol

of what it means

to be a success in America,

we're going to turn it on its head

and we're going sort of wear it

on our own terms.

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.

I like this. 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 ?

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 board meeting

to another meeting.

When you're in this industry,

you do have to keep pushing forward.

You gotta get out there and you've

got to be better every season.

And he wants to get better with age.

So he works harder.

Building this company, I believe

that one person can't do it all.

From the financial end of it,

to the artistic end of it,

it's the team.

One person can't be the great artist

and the great financial genius

and the Wall Street genius.

I might be the only guy, probably.

What's in a brand name ?

For Ralph Lauren's Polo brand,

about 767 million dollars.

That's how much was raised

in yesterday's initial public offering

of stock

in Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation.

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

more scrutiny than you were before.

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.

Going public is very complicated

for any fashion company.

It places a undue burden on

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.

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 you.

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.

And you have to choose some

sophisticated people financially

to help you grow.

Sometimes it works

and sometimes it doesn't.

A lot of people have come and gone

quite quickly over there,

because they have tried

to introduce a new way of thinking.

And 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 not

getting off that train.

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.

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, in London.

There's stores everywhere.

He has created this idea

of American style,

and what that means

around the world.

I really love the fact

that he celebrates his country.

It's very relative

to what his vision of America is

and it's very exotic for us, maybe,

the French people.

The fact that Ralph Lauren's

international name is as important

as the French and the Italians

is very significant

for American fashion.

When you ask young designers

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, he is the American designer

who represents America

and American fashion best

for the rest of the world.

When he 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.

When the Star-Spangled Banner was

tattering to shreds,

I reached out to Ralph

and next thing I knew

he was pledging 13 million dollars

to repair our Star-Spangled Banner.

It was literally the flag

that was flying

when our national anthem was written.

And it's because he got it.

He understands icons,

because he is one.

You couldn't grow up in America

in the 80's onwards

and not know the name

of Ralph Lauren.

He is the classic American mythological

entrepreneurial success story

in any industry.

The official uniform of the U.S.

Olympic team has been unveiled.

Ralph Lauren will throw out

tonight's ceremonial first pitch.

Being able to pitch at Yankee stadium

was unbelievable.

Thank you, Ralph

It is a key to our city.

Ralph Lauren will become the first

American designer to be knighted

by the Queen.

I think Ralph has won

every design award out there.

Thank you very, very much.

The lifetime achievement award that

Audrey Hepburn gave to Ralph

that was the high.

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.

I think this looks very good.

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."

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.

I really don't like.

- You don't like the belt ?

- I don't like these sneakers as much.

Something is not sharp enough.

I don't know what it is.

He has been able to stay very,

very true to his aesthetic,

while progressing that aesthetic,

one of the hardest things to do,

if not the hardest thing to do

in fashion.

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.

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's 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.

But I do think that it evolves

and it shifts

and our understanding of it changes

over time.

I don't know that his understanding

of it is changing.

And I think it's a problem for a brand

that I think is so much more

than just any old fashion brand.

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.

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 ?

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."

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 listened

to the critics, I would've quit.

Let's put that on again.

This is my 50th year.

So think of this, 50 years

back-and-forth on the runway saying:

"Oh my God, what am I going

to do next year ?"

We're searching for what's been done

and what's not been done.

These are the pictures.

You're rolling the dice again,

and again, and again.

This collection is just a culmination

of everything

that you've always believed in.

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."

Are you kidding ? I'm more nervous

today than I've ever been.

50TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK, 2018

I was completely boggled by it.

My eyes were falling out of my head

because everywhere I turned,

there was some

extraordinary person.

Anne Hathaway, Oprah Winfrey,

Robert De Niro, Steven Spielberg.

Every American designer, practically.

And everyone was there just to be

happy for Ralph and be proud of Ralph.

I thought it was wonderful.

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

up until the last moment.

Ralph Lauren's place

in fashion history is secure.

He represents something that is more

than just a bunch of clothes.

It was a very big tent

embrace of everybody.

You know, colors, ages, sizes.

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.

I think sometimes he can't quite

believe that it's happened.

Sometimes he's still that little boy,

not quite believing that

I am Ralph Lauren.

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.

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.

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 I believed in

about life.

50 years.

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 and 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.

Sometimes you have to fulfill

your dreams

to know what your real dream

is about.

The real dream is family, children,

having peace.