This was the first time that a designer has introduced two fragrances – one for men and one for women – simultaneously. The company entered the European market, and went international, in 1981 with the opening of the first freestanding store for an American designer on New Bond Street in the West End of London, England. In 1971, Ralph Lauren Corporation launched polo dress shirts a line of tailored shirts for women, which introduced the Polo player emblem to the world for the first time, appearing on the shirt’s cuff. The first full women’s collection was launched the following year. In 1971 Lauren also opened a store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California; this was the first freestanding store for an American designer.
The brand became a staple of the preppy style popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Discover the collection of Lauren by Ralph Lauren for women for a preppy American cool style. Choose from a range of structured blazers, straight leg jeans, knitted jumpers and floral print tops. Keep it classic with a blue and white striped shirt paired with tailored trousers or explore an array of dresses from mini to maxi including wrap dresses, shift dresses and evening dresses.
Ralph Lauren Polo partnered with L’oreal to introduce fragrances, beginning with iconic men’s scent Polo and classic women’s fragrance Lauren in 1978. The next two scents in the line, Chaps for Men and Tuxedo for Women, both introduced in 1979, also became beloved classics. Lauren designed costumes for the films The Great Gatsby and Annie Hall that influenced the way millions dressed. Lauren is also paterfamilias of a unit that is polo dress shirts part and parcel of his legacy. His wife Ricky and his three children, Andrew, David, and Dylan, have long appeared in his advertising, and David, 48, is now chief innovation officer and vice chairman of the Ralph Lauren Corporation. At the 50th anniversary fashion show in Central Park, amid such luminaries as Oprah Winfrey and Hillary Clinton, all the Laurens stood up when he took his bows, as they do at every one of his shows.
Polo expanded rapidly in the 1980s and 1990s, opening boutiques across the United States and abroad. In 1986, Lauren opened his company’s flagship store in New York’s Rhinelander Mansion on Madison Avenue, which has since become flanked by several other Lauren stores. With Goldman Sachs having purchased more than a quarter of the company in the mid-1990s, Polo Ralph Lauren went public on June 11, 1997, trading under the symbol RL. As of October 2015, the success of Polo Polo Ralph Lauren t shirt has earned Lauren a personal fortune estimated at more than $6 billion, ranking Lauren among the 200 richest people in the world. In 1967, while working for Beau Brummell, Lauren began designing his own men’s neckties with a wider cut, branding them under the name “Polo” and selling them at large department stores, including Bloomingdale’s. Lauren was able to more fully develop his business with a $30,000 loan, eventually expanding his designs to a full menswear line.
Anybody who has ever swung at a golf ball and missed might be inclined to believe that what they’re doing wrong is maybe not wearing enough Ralph Lauren. As integral to golf as the putting green is to the game, Ralph Lauren’s Golf line features enough golf gear options to outfit a pebble beach. The riding jackets, the jodhpurs, the saddle-shaped bag, the stirrup-shaped watch collections, the Gia Carangi ad, the embroidered crests and wool training vests. The story goes that Ralph and his wife Ricky (an original horse-girl muse?) were shopping in a riding store one day. Ralph bought Ricky an authentic boy’s tweed hacking jacket, and whenever she’d wear it, women would compliment.