Spectacular Ralph Lauren

In the early life of the fashion designer, the persistent Ralph Lifshitz was born in the Bronx, New York City, on October 14, 1939.  His parents were Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants from Belarus.  Ralph Lauren, at the age of 16 along with his brother Jerry had changed their last names to Lauren, having been teased consistently at school.  With his other brother, Lenny, held on to the family name.  Ralph Lauren attended Baruch College in Manhattan, where he studied business for two years.  After a brief chore in the army, Ralph took a sales job at Brooks brothers.

           

            In the beginning chapters of Ralph Lauren’s career, Ralph began designing men’s neckties in 1967, branding them under the name “Polo” and selling them in big department stores, including Bloomingdale’s.  From then, Ralph Lauren expanded his designs to a complete menswear line.  In 1970, Ralph Lauren was awarded the Coty Award for his spectacular menswear designs.  This recognition had inspired a release of a women’s line of tailored suits in a classic men’s style.  Two years following, Ralph Lauren released a short-sleeve cotton shirt in 24 colors.  This design, jazzed up with the Polo logo, became the brand’s signature look.  Ralph Lauren later broadened his brand to provide a luxury clothing line called Ralph Lauren Purple, a home-furnishing collection called Ralph Lauren Home, and an entire collection of fragrances.  The acclaimed Polo continues to produce clothing for men, women and children.  His excellence of fashion designing has led him to design Olympic uniforms for Team USA.  Polo grew speedily throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s, opening boutiques across the United States and in foreign land.  In 1984, Ralph Lauren opened his flagship store in New York’s Rhinelander Mansion.  Traded under the symbol RL, the company went public on June 11, 1997.  The prosperity of Polo has earned him a personal fortune estimated at $6.5 billion.  This sum, if accurate, would make Ralph Lauren the 122^nd richest person in the world.

            At age sixty-five Ralph Lauren, amongst other tremendous businessmen-designers in the fashion industry, remains driven, strong and unstoppable. Yet, trouble had creeped when Ralph Lauren aimed to reposition Polo as a premium luxury brand.  Polo’s stock price drooped the day it was first offered to the public, and investors and financiers remained unconvinced by Polo’s position in the market, but also its future.  As head of a company, his style intuition, and his personality, became his foundation to a well-built Ralph Lauren accepting no doubt or failure as his reality.  Lauren married receptionist Ricky Anne Low-Beer in New York City in 1964. He successfully concealed the fact that Ricky was only half Jewish from his parents before the wedding. 

The Laurens are parents of three children: Andrew, David and Dylan. David Lauren is the only one of the three to have made his career at Polo. In 2011 he married Lauren Bush, the niece of former President George W. Bush.  Andrew Lauren is a film producer, while Dylan Lauren is the owner of the New York City candy store Dylan’s Candy Bar. 

Sources

 Gross, Michael. "Lauren, Ralph." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 25 Jan. 2013. <http://www.bergfashionlibrary.com/view/bazf/bazf00359.xml>.

"Ralph Lauren." 2013. The Biography Channel website. Jan 25 2013, 09:27http://www.biography.com/people/ralph-lauren-9374814.

Count Givenchy

Count Hubert James Marcel Taffin de Givenchy was born February 21, 1927.  In 1944 he took a position as an apprentice designer as the couture house of Jacques Fath.

In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s he took a series of jobs as an assistant designer- first with Fath, then with Lucien Lelong, Robert Piguet, and Elsa Schiaparelli.  Givenchy’s years as an assistant designer emcompassed the period of the New Look and perhaps instilled in him a sense of romacticism that was to characterize his work for over four decades.

In 1953 he met Cristóbal Balenciaga who quickly became his mentor and lifelong friend.  Givenchy moved his business in 1955 across the street from Balenciaga's atelier, and the two men were in almost daily contact thereafter.  The House of Givenchy was started in 1952 and is famous for designing for Audrey Hepburn in her movies Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), and My Fair Lady (1964).

The designer was generous in acknowledging Hepburn's role in his career, remarking "often ideas would come to me when I had her on my mind. She always knew what she wanted and what she was aiming for. It was like that from the very start." Givenchy's style was characterized by bright cheerful colors and a youthful femininity.   

His father died in a plane crash when Hubert de Givenchy was two, so his grandfather was left to provide for him. His grandfather had been a director of the Gobelin's tapestry works and was a considerable influence on the young Givenchy.  But perhaps the most telling portents of his future career came from his grandmother. Givenchy recalls how, when he was a schoolboy, she rewarded him for good grades by “showing me her treasures - whole cabinets filled with every kind of fabric, all of which left me utterly dazzled”. More than anything else, it was fabric that was the great stimulus to creativity for Givenchy. For him, the most exciting part of a collection wasn't the end result, but the very start of the design process, when new fabrics arrived. “So wonderful to touch. I miss that feeling of touching fabric.” Givenchy has been luckier than most in fashion in that, from an early age, he was in a position to do exactly what he wanted.  Bowing to family pressure, though, he studied law.  When not at his studies, he was working part-time for one of the most successful couturiers in Paris - Jacques Fath. Fath was the first French dress designer to become known in the U.S., through a deal with an American manufacturer to make and sell a range of his designs there, under his own label. After Fath, came Dior.

Givenchy and Hepburn

Hepburn became a life-long friend and help-mate, closer to him than a sister. She phoned him at least twice a week, no matter where she might be. “She was impeccable in every way,” says Givenchy. “Totally loyal and true, she would call at different times, with no pattern, but, as the phone rang, I always knew it was Audrey (Hepburn), before I even picked it up. Often she was very brief, “I don't want to disturb you. I just wanted to say I love you. Goodbye.” And that would be all.” Hepburn's ladylike qualities endeared her to Givenchy as much as her beauty and sophistication. 

Major, John. "Givenchy, Hubert de." The Berg Fashion Library. The Berg Fashion Library, 2005. Web. 17 Jan. 2013. <http://www.bergfashionlibrary.com/view/bazf/bazf00271.xml>.

McDowell, Colin. "Living: Simply Givenchy He Fashioned Audrey Hepburn's Image, Honed the Jackie Kennedy Look and, for More than 40 Years, Dressed some of the World's Richest Women. Twentieth-Century Style Owes an Awful Lot to Hubert De Givenchy. Colin McDowell Meets One of Couture's Last True Aristocrats." The Guardian: 0. Oct 10 1998. ProQuest Central.Web. 17 Jan. 2013 .