Ralph Lauren - Fashion Company Profile

Company Profile

Current collections, stores and company information are on the Ralph Lauren website, linked above; the shop box covers Ralph Lauren products sold through Amazon and eBay. The company's shape today is the one its own chronology built toward: a listed luxury group (renamed from Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation to Ralph Lauren Corporation in 2011) whose product families - Polo Ralph Lauren, Lauren, the luxury Collection and Purple Label lines, Ralph Lauren Home and the restaurants that grew from the 1999 Chicago RL - all descend from the total-look idea set out in 1968. The dated record of how it got there, year by year from the 1967 ties to the 2006 Tokyo flagship, is kept in full on the history page, including the quotations the company filed with each milestone. One cross-reference belongs to this letter: the Ralph Lauren Watch and Jewelry Company, formed with Richemont in 2007, links this profile to the Richemont filing beside it.

The chronology this profile keeps is unusually complete, because the company told its own story year by year. In 1968 Lauren set out to show customers how to wear the ties - the idea behind the look - and Polo became a leading menswear company dedicated to a total look, merging classic American style with the refinement, tailoring and sensibility of European fashion. In 1969 Polo by Ralph Lauren established the first shop-within-a-shop designer boutique for men, in Bloomingdale's in New York City. A first Coty Award for Menswear came in 1970, and in 1971 the womenswear line arrived: daring tailored shirts cut from the men's tradition, inspired by his wife Ricky's style, and carrying a new mark on the cuff - the polo player emblem, at the birth of the Polo signature.