Ahead of the launch of Polo Ralph Lauren for Women, the designer talks to Dirk Standen about fashion hits, fashion critics, and the secrets to lasting style.
The office was pretty much the way I’d pictured it would be: wood paneling, black-and-white photos, sleek leather-and-chrome club chairs arranged around a book-laden coffee table the size of a boat. And the man sitting across from me was more or less familiar from his photographs: the carefully barbered white hair; the tan, gentler now than in its full Cary Grant glory; the art-directed getup of white jeans, sneakers, and khaki jacket, with a jangle of turquoise and silver pendants peeking out from the neck of his matching khaki shirt. But the moment Ralph Lauren began to speak, his voice a soft hepcat whisper, any preconceptions went out the window. The topic at hand was his newest baby, Polo Ralph Lauren for Women—it launches tonight, Monday, September 8, with a high-tech spectacular in Central Park—but no subject was off-limits. I’d been expecting guarded, but he spoke candidly for more than an hour, without even the ghost of a PR handler in the room. I’d been prepared to hear him recite his hits, but he was just as ready to get into the misses. I’d been bracing for a monologue, but he insisted on a dialogue. To build an empire as vast, consistent, and enduringly vital as Ralph Lauren’s, you have to know a thing or two about communicating your ideas. But it occurred to me as I walked away from that memento-filled sanctum, maybe the secret is to be a world-class listener.
