From ghetto to glamour: how American Jews toppled Paris couture and redesigned the fashion industry.
Moment › Vol. 34 Nbr. 4, July 2009
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From ghetto to glamour: how American Jews toppled Paris couture and redesigned the fashion industry.
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Ralph Rueben Lifshitz's father was a housepainter who longed to be an artist. His mother, green-eyed Frieda Lifshitz, insisted that Ralph and her other three children attend yeshiva in the hope that they would bring her "Jewish nachas." But Ralph, born in 1939 in the Bronx, had other ideas. While other kids in the fifties were wearing motorcycle jackets, he saved money from after-school jobs to buy oxford shirts, crew neck sweaters and white high-top sneakers. When he couldn't find clothes to match his instincts, he designed his own. Encouraged by his father, who appreciated his sense of color and texture, Lifshitz, by then Ralph Lauren, founded his own company in 1968, choosing the name Polo to evoke the power and style of the upper-class sport. From the start, his clothes reflected the gentrified sensibility of polo matches, yacht clubs and family crests. He became the breakout design star of the post-war era, a pioneer who understood the global hunger for assimilation. Today, Lauren is ubiquitous in fashion, head of a powerful global empire that designs all of its products--from sportswear to fragrances to home furnishings and even paint--with an aura of casual American comfort and upper-crust British class. In keeping with the Polo image, Lauren has perfected his...See the full content of this document
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