{"id":4598,"date":"2026-07-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=4598"},"modified":"2026-07-09T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T05:00:00","slug":"why-ralph-lauren-is-the-most-influential-designer-of-the-last-60-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/?p=4598","title":{"rendered":"Why Ralph Lauren Is the Most Influential Designer of the Last 60 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ralph Lauren created more than just a fashion brand \u2013 Anna Murphy explores how he invented an entirely new way of dressing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s not the one who conjures the biggest catwalk splashes; who creates viral pieces and moments. It\u2019s the one who has changed the very narrative of how we dress today, so much so that his achievements are hiding in plain sight.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ralph Lauren invented the language of the contemporary wardrobe. Right from the beginning \u2013\u202ffrom the launch of Polo in 1967, and then womenswear in 1972 \u2013 he was all about a mix that was both irreverent and aspirational. In Lauren land \u2013\u202fa realm that melds wearability and aspiration \u2013 and now in the world at large, it\u2019s completely normal to pair, say, a tuxedo jacket with a pair of jeans. Yet to combine a tux with blue denim is to cross-fertilise two very different takes on the American dream. Jay Gatsby meets John Wayne. People didn\u2019t do that before Lauren came along.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was he who first drew on multiple American dreams and coalesced them into a whole.\u00a0Also\u00a0in the mix was everyone from Sitting Bull to Amelia Earhart by way of Katharine Hepburn and Joe DiMaggio.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

See also: The Designer Behind Dior\u2019s Wildest Shoes Is Breaking All the Rules<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Ralph Lauren Fall\/Winter 1975 \u00a92025 Mellon Tytell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So-called code switching is at the heart of modern fashion, and this is the designer who began it all, as evidenced by the weighty new tome\u00a0Ralph Lauren: Catwalk Collection<\/a><\/em>, which covers over 100 women\u2019s runway shows and contains over 1,000 images. People don\u2019t want to be one thing\u00a0anymore. They want to be several. They want to have their cake and eat it. To be polished yet cool. Preppy yet hip. Uptown yet downtown. Part of something yet also definitively themselves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Right from the start Lauren \u2013 who, in another manifestation of the American dream, is still working at 86 \u2013 wasn\u2019t just creating clothes but casting a surround-sound world. His approach is akin to that of a film director, creating his own double takes on the movies he loved growing up as Ralph Lifshitz, the son of two Jewish immigrants, in the Bronx. His storytelling, like that of the other great American mythmaker, Hollywood, has captured the imagination of the world.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

The pictures in the book from the first collection, for fall\/winter 72\/3, show clothes that could be worn today, be that the then- newfangled notion of a tuxedo dress (backless and to-the-floor) or the natty tweed suiting that channelled the British aristocracy. (Because threaded into the American dream, and thus Lauren\u2019s dream, were other origin stories from further afield.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

See also: Why Has Chanel Bought Historic Shirtmaker Charvet?<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Ralph Lauren Spring\/Summer 1985 \u00a9Niall McInerney\/Bloomsbury\/Launchmetrics\/Spotlight<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The tropes of masculine dressing were feminised so definitively in this catwalk debut that onlookers at the time found it as confusing as they did beguiling.\u00a0The New Yorker<\/em>\u00a0declared it \u201ca phenomenon to bewilder anthropologists\u2026 [one] not only astonishing but handsome.\u201d Like all truly great designers, Lauren is, in truth, akin to an anthropologist himself, looking at who people are, or want to be, and how they dress themselves to\u00a0semaphor\u00a0to other their identity, whether real or aspired to.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the early years Lauren still hadn\u2019t visited Europe, incidentally. Nor had he yet been to Africa, from which he was inspired to recreate safari chic. He hadn\u2019t even made it to a New England prep school, another aesthetic that was central to his oeuvre. It was his original outsider status \u2013 long vanished, of course \u2013\u202fthat made him so good at capturing the world of the insider, and at repackaging it in such a way as to appeal both to those who were already there and those who, like him, wanted to be. \u201cIf I had been born to\u00a0it\u00a0I might not have been\u2026 I wouldn\u2019t have had the same dream,\u201d he once told me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Ralph Lauren Spring\/Summer 2004 \u00a9firstVIEW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like fashion,\u201d he also said on that same occasion, the man who started out as a tie salesman, modeling to his then-customers the old-school-ish\u00a0styles he had created with jeans, a leather bomber and cowboy boots. What? Ralph Lauren doesn\u2019t like fashion? \u201cNo,\u201d he continued. \u201cIt\u2019s very changeable. It\u2019s\u2026 It\u2019s about time. I like style. Style is, in a way, who you are, and using your own sensibilities to present yourself. I never went to fashion school, but I do design clothes. I do come up with the dream. I want it to be good, and I want it to be timeless.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

To flick through the pages of his new book \u2013\u202fall 631 of them \u2013\u202fis to see season after season, look after look, that would work just as well today as they did back in the year of their genesis. Timeless indeed.\u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n

Perhaps it\u2019s the perfect white shirt dress, from spring-summer 85, or the cut-to-kill monochrome tailoring from the Hollywood-inspired collection of fall\/winter 95-6 or the kaleidoscope of\u00a0floorsweeper\u00a0frocks from spring-summer 2004 or the nautical chic of spring-summer 2016. I could go on. (And on.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

See also: The Royal Family\u2019s Secret Weapon? Fashion<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Ralph Lauren Spring\/Summer 2025 \u00a9Isidore Montag<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And he is still nailing it, to wit the gloriously on-brand mash-up from this season, whether that\u2019s the pairing of a simple white vest with a\u00a0mindblowingly\u00a0glamorous gold and silver beaded skirt or the multi-coloured ultra-cool-looking\u00a0preppiness. And then there are next season\u2019s deliciously operatic odd-couple pairings. A frothy white jabot collar toughened up by a black bomber jacket, a cream satin and lace gown with a Butch Cassidy belt. Heaven.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the vision,\u201d Lauren told me. \u201cI had the girl. I had the guy. I knew what they looked like.\u201d And now we are that girl. We are that guy. And the whole world knows what they look like.\u202f<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ralph Lauren created more than just a fashion brand \u2013 Anna Murphy explores how he invented an entirely new way of dressing.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the one who conjures the biggest catwalk splashes; who creates viral pieces and moments. It\u2019s the one who has changed the very narrative of how we dress today, so much so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4599,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","beyondwords_generate_audio":"","beyondwords_project_id":"","beyondwords_content_id":"","beyondwords_preview_token":"","beyondwords_player_content":"","beyondwords_player_style":"","beyondwords_language_id":"","beyondwords_title_voice_id":"","beyondwords_body_voice_id":"","beyondwords_summary_voice_id":"","beyondwords_error_message":"","beyondwords_disabled":"","beyondwords_delete_content":"","beyondwords_podcast_id":"","beyondwords_hash":"","publish_post_to_speechkit":"","speechkit_hash":"","speechkit_generate_audio":"","speechkit_project_id":"","speechkit_podcast_id":"","speechkit_error_message":"","speechkit_disabled":"","speechkit_access_key":"","speechkit_error":"","speechkit_info":"","speechkit_response":"","speechkit_retries":"","speechkit_status":"","speechkit_updated_at":"","_speechkit_link":"","_speechkit_text":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/facesjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}