Bristling with gables and topped off with a steep mansard roof, the regal chateau on Madison Avenue looks as if it has been transported whole from the Loire Valley of France. But inside the landmark Rhinelander mansion, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, the mood is more English than French, more squirely than seigniorial.
Whatever the conceit may be, this is the flagship store of Polo Ralph Lauren, the fashion firm that has grown into a $3.5 billion worldwide empire through canny marketing of its founder’s vision of combining well-to-do luxury, English gentry goods and American packaging. The store is a total environmentthe manor house as department store–with no detail left to chance, down to the leatherbound copy of “British Sports and Sportsmen” that has been conspicuously left by the gas-fired hearth.
This vision of life as one long country weekend will come to Chicago Nov. 18 when Ralph Lauren opens his largest retail store yet at Michigan and Chicago Avenues, one of the prime locations on Chicago’s premier shopping boulevard. The interior of the 37,000-square-foot emporium will be modeled on the New York mansion, with mahogany paneling, working fireplaces on every floor, and the largest collection of art and photography of any Lauren store.
“I think this is a building that Chicago is going to be very proud of,” the 59-year-old Lauren said in an interview in the surprisingly small office he occupies at his corporate headquarters. “I’m coming to Chicago in a way that, if I lived there, I would be very happy about.”
Not, as Lauren points out, that he hasn’t been represented in Chicago for a long time, since the 1970s. But by virtue of its size and location, Lauren’s new store represents something of a milestone for the Bronx-born son of a Russian immigrant who started out selling his own ties in 1967. Unlike the now-cramped New York store, everything that carries the Ralph Lauren name will be gathered under one elegantly corniced roof. That includes not just men’s and women’s clothing but also his children’s lines; space will also be set aside for shoes, luggage, men’s and women’s equestrian wear, fragrances, and his Polo Sport sportswear. Occupying an entire floor will be his home furnishings, which are designed around glamorous or romantic themes, such as the life of a diplomat, an African safari, or a visit to a country house. The store will even include the first Ralph Lauren restaurant.
This all-encompassing store is a way of announcing that, since going public last year, Lauren sees few limits to further extensions of his brand name.
“It sort of represents who you are to a vast audience,” said Lauren, speaking in quiet, confident cadences, his arms resting on the sides of a deep leather club chair in his antique-cluttered office.
He did not set out to make the four-story Georgian structure the largest of the 116 free-standing Polo stores worldwide. It was simply a matter of needing that much space to hold all the products that bear some combination of the words Polo, Ralph and Lauren. Still, the strong Chicago presence seems as carefully tailored as his deep blue Purple Label suit, crisp French blue shirt with white collar, and lustrous midnight blue silk knit tie.
“It’s not as trendy as L.A.,” Lauren said. “It’s a city that is solid and has credibility and is not flippant. The customer I sell to is in Chicago.”
That customer, in his view, is someone who wants quality goods that will last instead of the latest fashions that might look ridiculous in a year. Someone who is practical. And, given that one of his Purple Label suits can cost $2,300, someone who has money.
But Michigan Avenue is already crowded with high-end retailers, and Henri Bendel was just shouldered out in August. Will Lauren’s limestone edifice be a magnet that draws customers away from other shops?
“Ralph Lauren is going to be a formidable competitor, make no mistake about that,” said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard’s Retail Trend Report, a forecasting firm. “But at the same time, it’s going to draw more customers into the area. A lot of people who might not have gone there to see Marshall Field’s would go there to see Ralph Lauren and then go to Field’s too.”
Lauren’s large stores are not necessarily supposed to be profitable. The lavishly appointed Madison Avenue location has lost as much as $1 million a month, according to published reports.
“You don’t open up anything not to be moneymakers,” Lauren said with a smile. “But what (the Madison Avenue store) has done is to make a lot more money for the company anyway. People come in and maybe they don’t buy something then, but they buy something of mine later somewhere else. What it does for the overall picture is it sets the tone.”
Assembling the whole Lauren look in one place is a way of raising his already elevated profile and of sharpening shoppers’ desires to own something–anything–that bears his name. A customer may be frightened away by the prices, but perhaps those towels that were so seductively draped over an antique wicker chair in a Lauren store will be on sale later at a department store. Or Polo knit shirts may end up marked down at one of Lauren’s 73 outlet stores, one of his fastest-growing sales categories and one of his most important tools in reaching more of the mass market.
After 31 years–an eternity in the fashion business–Lauren can take the long view.
“I sort of feel like I’m a writer who writes through his clothes,” he said. “My business is about clothes you wear for sport, clothes you go to work in. I make clothes that people want to wear.”
Part of the reason people want to wear them, of course, is what the Polo image stands for, a life of wealth and privilege.
“Ralph Lauren is a name that aims to reach those people who would like to appear to their friends and relatives as belonging to the leisured, moneyed class,” said Barnard. “They may not, but they can do the one thing that will make people think they are: They can buy themselves the clothes.”
Lauren does not claim to be a fashion designer a la Isaac Mizrahi, whose striking styles got great reviews but whose low sales led him to close up shop last month. Still, the notion that the former Ralph Lifshitz from the Bronx has borrowed a style rather than created one of his own rankles him.
“I was always preppy in an area where people were wearing motorcycle jackets,” he said. “Somewhere along the line, I had a romantic sense of things, probably from my father, who was an artist. People like certain clothes. It’s their taste.”
Debates about whether Lauren has a personal style as a designer may be passe anyway, according to Tom Julian, a New York-based trend analyst for the advertising firm Fallon McElligott.
“Today a designer is not just a designer,” Julian said, citing Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein in addition to Lauren. “That designer is a global visionary with a lot of taste-making style, market savviness and skill at building a brand, and they are powered by a global organization. This is their craft. It’s carving out a niche and tailoring that look to a lifestyle.”
Honing and expanding the Lauren look has reaped yields that would make a banker blush. Last year, Polo Ralph Lauren had worldwide wholesale revenue of $3.5 billion, which means customers spent about $7 billion to take home something bearing Lauren’s polo player logo. In its most recent listing of wealthy Americans, Forbes put Lauren’s personal worth at $1.7 billion.
“I didn’t know then (in 1967) that I’d be where I am today,” Lauren recently told a meeting of investors in Baron Funds, which owns a major share of Polo stock. “I just worked.”
Such appearances are a new and not necessarily welcome part of Lauren’s life since his company went public in June 1997. But that move, along with selling more than 28 percent of his business to investment banking giant Goldman Sachs in 1994, has provided the cash to fuel his expansion plans, such as the Chicago store and a 25,000-square-foot London shop that opens next year.
“I was afraid to walk through the door because my stock is not flying,” Lauren joked with the investors, referring to Polo’s lackluster performance on the New York Stock Exchange. “But our image, our brand is stronger than ever. When you don’t want to buy the product, then you should sell the stock.”
That’s not a sell order that Ronald Baron, president of Baron Funds, is likely to execute anytime soon. He’s in awe of Lauren’s ability to find new and profitable ways to extend his reach in the marketplace. “Ralph may even figure out how to use the Polo brand some day to market ranch vacations and cars,” he said.
Or a restaurant. That’s the new feature in the Chicago store that Lauren talks about with greatest enthusiasm, and it, like so many ventures in his career, grew out of a personal dissatisfaction with the way things are. After a reception at his New York store, he walked out in a glow and was jolted back to reality by the noise and confusion of a New York night. “I thought, `I wish I could go to a restaurant like my store and keep the mood going.’ “
That led to his teaming up with the restaurateur who runs Lauren’s favorite dining spot, Vico, a small Italian place on the Upper East Side. Featuring Italian cuisine and steaks made from the cattle Lauren raises on his Colorado ranch, his restaurant, opening in the spring, represents another attempt to keep the Polo mood going–to reshape reality to Lauren’s liking.
“Retailing is a moving concept,” he said. “People go to stores because they want the product, but it’s also a form of entertainment, and getting a mood is what I do.”
