Ralph Lauren's Polo Shirt

Image of Ralph Lauren's Polo Shirt
Release Date: 
April 15, 2019
Publisher/Imprint: 
Rizzoli
Pages: 
208
Reviewed by: 

Within the world of fashion there are very few designers/brands that any fashion aficionado would consider royalty, and even fewer who have continually and unerringly adhered to their brand’s DNA; one of them is unquestionably Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren’s Polo Shirt is both a testament to him as a designer as well as to his internationally known American fashion and lifestyle brand.

Lauren has turned almost commonplace items into silent signals of status, a lifestyle, and an almost unrivaled recognition of any American designer’s fashion brand. The modus operandi of Ralph Lauren as a designer and brand is to “evolutionize” fashion like no other has ever done. The designer has sold the public an aura of a lifestyle and a sort of inclusion into an aspirational world of status and wealth. Let’s face it, no one grows up aspiring to be a polo player, if you catch the drift of that!

Ralph Lauren’s Polo Shirt proves that you can take an item that was born some 90 years ago in France and turn it into something that men, women, and children want or already own. Lauren has massaged the Lacoste shirt and made it his own to the point that this reader is pretty much convinced that most consumers are not even aware that Renée Lacoste ever existed or that the “crocodile” was some sort of moniker attributed to a tennis player. Again, Lauren is the master of massage when it comes to his own fashion; he tweaks in the most subtle ways and sometimes in the most obvious ways which yields him immense notoriety and sales.

Ralph Lauren’s Polo Shirt is a sort of manual/primer that shows that with proper marketing, endless permutations, and design skills an item can have a seemingly never-ending lifespan. Readers of fashion and those in many of the contiguous aspects of fashion will benefit from owning and reading this mega volume and taking heed of this man’s accomplishment.