Ralph Lauren

The Library Essay

He Sold the Life, Not the Shirt

Ralph Lauren began in 1967 with a line of unfashionably wide ties sold under the name Polo, and built from them an empire founded on a single insight, that Americans would buy not garments but a world, old money, open country, weathered leather and sail canvas, invented whole by a young man from the Bronx. He was among the first to design that world completely, from clothing through advertising to the shops themselves.

This Rizzoli monograph, first published in 2007 for the label's fortieth year and expanded in 2017 for its fiftieth, is the record he assembled himself, runway work, campaigns and the private rooms and cars that fed the imagery. It documents a career in which the merchandise was always the visible part of a larger act of authorship.