In 2000 the company’s Web site, Polo.com , was introduced, allowing online access to all Ralph Lauren products. Lauren’s charitable contributions continued with the creation of the Polo Volunteer Program and the contribution of $5 million to establish the Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention and Care at North General Hospital in Harlem, New York. Lauren lived the image he projected, and he was often featured with his family in magazines devoted to lives of the rich and famous. One of the secrets of Lauren’s success lay in his attention to detail, always checking product quality and maintaining tight control over the brand image he crafted so carefully. He had seven Coty design awards and was inducted into the Coty Hall of Fame in 1986.
He went on to attend Baruch College in Manhattan, where he studied business for two years. After a brief stint in the Army, Lauren took on a sales job at Brooks Brothers. In 1971 Lauren opened his first retail store in Beverly Hills, California, building toward a total of 116 Polo-Ralph Lauren stores in the United States as well as 1,300 boutiques . In 1986 he made fashion retailing history with a large megastore housed in the elegant former Rhinelander Mansion in New York.
In 2000 the Ralph Lauren Corporation launched its Volunteer Program, which energizes employees and creates meaningful connections with the communities in which they work. Ralph Lauren opened his first flagship in the Rhinelander mansion, on Madison Avenue and 72nd Street in New York City in 1986. Lauren re-created the building’s original opulence with a young design consultant named Naomi Leff, with whom he had previously worked on Ralph Lauren Home. The Polo Sport line was introduced in 1992 followed by over ten additional lines and acquired brands, including Ralph Lauren Purple Label in 1995 and Lauren Ralph Lauren in 1996.
What began 40 years ago with a collection of ties has grown into an entire world, redefining American style. Ralph Lauren has always stood for providing quality products, creating worlds and inviting ralph lauren t shirt people to take part in their dream. They were the innovators of lifestyle advertisements that tell a story, and the first to create stores that encourage customers to participate in that lifestyle.
(The events began on September 7 with a blockbuster fashion show and black tie dinner at Bethesda Fountain in Central Park.) At 78 he was a bit unsure of his pitching arm, and while he had no illusions that he would be confused with C.C. Polo is hardly as all-American as Ralph Lauren would have you believe. In fact, the horseback croquet is one of the oldest equestrian sports in the world, and was first played in Persia sometime around the 6th century. In its early days, Polo was more of a military drilling exercise than it was a sport, invented with the intention of training cavalrymen, before it was taken up by nobility. Polo did a world tour of influence before gaining popularity in England, from which it was then brought to America. So really, the U.S. was one of the last countries to jump on the Polo trend bandwagon.
Ralph Lauren partnered with L’Oreal in 1978 to release two debut fragrances, his and hers simultaneously, launched at Bloomingdale’s. “Polo” was woody, vigorous, and masculine where “Lauren” was soft, floral, feminine. This event would inaugurate decades of smash-hit scents for men and women , and an enormous slew of magazine advertisements polo dress shirts torn out and pasted on teenage walls worldwide. From Ralph Lauren Blue, Polo Sport, Ralph for Women, Ralph Lauren’s fragrance campaigns, with their perfectly of-the-moment casting and youthful sex appeal set the tone for his and hers aesthetic aspirations. Perhaps advertising campaigns are just as closely linked to memory as scent.