How Ralph Lauren Redefined American Fashion Forever

When David Lauren was very young, he used to tote around a Polaroid camera at his father’s fashion shows. “I was standing on my seat at seven years old,” he recalls, “taking pictures, and the models would stop on the runway because with Polaroid film, you only get, I don’t know, 6 or 10 pictures in a pack. They waited for me to restock my Polaroid and get the jam out!”

Iman walking in Ralph Lauren’s spring/summer 1984 show.

Sadly, those Polaroids have long since disappeared into the archival ether. But Lauren’s memories recently got a refresher as the Ralph Lauren team pored over more than a half-century’s worth of runway imagery—some of which hadn’t been seen by the design team in 50 years—in preparation for Ralph Lauren Catwalk, the newest volume in a Yale University Press series that includes works on Prada and Chanel.

Gisele walks the runway for the brand’s fall/winter 1999 show.

The book kicks off with a fall 1972 presentation featuring tweedy, menswear-inspired womenswear that is very Annie Hall avant la lettre. (Five years later, Diane Keaton would go on to wear some of the designer’s pieces, sourced from her own wardrobe, in the film.) “Timeless” is a moving target, but the tweed jackets and fringed Western skirts Lauren designed in his early years could easily be on a runway today.

“The things I treasure most have no age, no time, no trend; it’s about creating something that lasts.”—Ralph Lauren

Now the chief branding and innovation officer of the company, David has come to the realization that what his father was doing “was, in many ways, anti-fashion. He was not a traditional designer. He didn’t go to fashion school. The idea of putting jeans on a runway was counterintuitive to people.” Back then, he remembers, “fashion shows were for extreme fashion. They were for artistry. Showing the way you should dress on the street was not what people were doing.”

A look from the fall/winter 2016 collection.

Flipping through the pages, you can see Lauren’s lifelong codes forming: the English gentry, the rugged Westerner, the Ivy League preppy, the rough-hewn adventurer, the Golden Age of Hollywood goddess. (Some of which made appearances on the runway at his most recent show, for fall 2026.) As the designer himself tells me, “Each show represents a chapter in the story I’ve been telling for nearly six decades, rooted in authenticity and timeless style. The things I treasure most have no age, no time, no trend; it’s about creating something that lasts.”

Inés Rivero in the spring 1998 show.

In a time when the world was besotted with European fashion, Lauren helped put American style on the map. But his vision of what it means to look American also translates around the globe. “He was telling stories that were romantic and universal,” David tells me. “The American spirit of the cowboy is not about a guy on a horse. It is about freedom.”

“It’s become personal to [our audience] in a way that we could never have dreamed.”—David Lauren

Lauren created one of the first lifestyle brands, transcending fashion. The price of admission to that world, today, could be a burger at the Polo Bar or a cup of Ralph’s Coffee. But in a landscape that’s increasingly lacking, and thus inexorably drawn to, a sense of permanence, heritage, and quality, the aesthetic not only resonates—it periodically goes viral. Look at this past holiday season, when “Ralph Lauren Christmas” (think tartan pillows and lush natural garlands) was everywhere on our feeds. And, David tells me, that trend happened independently of the brand, fueled by superfans. “It’s become personal to them in a way that we could never have dreamed.”