Ralph Lauren’s vision of America is poetic. His designs invoke the vast West, prep schools as well as the Ivy League, the Long Island of Sabrina, the hunt clubs of Virginia, and, yes, america we put aside: England. Lauren’s can be a fantasia on the party's theme of sportswear as well as the stylishly appointed wardrobes—riding, hunting, tennis, Olympic team uniforms—which have been de rigueur through these utopias and idylls. The love for your proper fabric rolling around in its proper form, for silhouettes with a resonant historicity but a contemporary performance, has generated a mulit-billion-dollar empire. Few on the globe will ever play polo, but millions wear Ralph Lauren short-sleeved, Polo Ralph Lauren Hoodies.
This vision has become called taste, class, snob, it reflects the American ethic of upward mobility for all. In 1998, Lauren donated $13 million on the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., money that went toward the preservation on the American flag—the 1813 original that inspired “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This man brings a slice in the American Dream to everything he does.
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