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Lauren the trendsetter
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--My goal in design is to achieve the ultimate dream -- the best reality imaginable.
--I am not looking like Armani today and somebody else tomorrow. I look like Ralph Lauren. And my goal is to constantly move in fashion and move in style without giving up what I am.
-Ralph Lauren
IT is Ralph Lauren's innovativeness, among many other traits of the model businessman, that has made him the founder, designer and chairman of a US$900 million company. Not only was he the first fashion designer to have his own store, but he was the first to sell the whole lifestyle image that consumers flock to worldwide. Lauren sells much more than clothes and home furnishings; he sells a lifestyle image of sophistication, class and taste.
He is known for combining innovation and tradition with inspirations that come from African safaris, English aristocracy, old Hollywood, Parisian cafe life, the Western frontier, Russian revolutionaries, Santa Fe adobes, Eastern prep schools and competitive sports.
Born Ralph Lifshitz on October 14, 1939, in the Bronx, New York in a middle-class Jewish family, Ralph Lauren's fashion sense was apparent at an early age when he would purchase expensive suits with the money he earned working at his after-school job to look stylish in his expensive threads -- and he has succeeded at looking cool in his attire since the age of 12.
One would think that Lauren attended fashion design school, but he actually studied business at City College in Manhattan, and dropped out short of receiving his business degree.
Student by night, Lauren would work by day at two glove companies as a salesman. He then worked for a tie manufacturer named A Rivetz & Co, which ultimately led to the fashion empire he leads today.
While working at A Rivetz & Co, Lauren began designing wide ties, which spawned his first entrepreneurial career. With his tie designs and a US$50,000 loan, Lauren founded the company Polo Fashions in 1968.
The Polo brand, known today as the preppy English-tweed look it conveys, did not get to be a million dollar empire because Lauren was lucky, nor because Lauren had an immaculate sense of style. Lauren not only had an innovative mind, but he also knew that packaging and presentation were of utmost importance -- something he didn't need to learn while studying for his business degree.
As a trendsetter, Ralph Lauren has been setting standards in the fashion industry for 30 years. His clear insistence on classic form and function makes him an icon in this industry.
(SD-Agencies)
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