A stripped-down life

Ralph Lauren the brand has so thoroughly pervaded popular culture that it has practically transcended the designer himself. But now, two very different biographies are examining the man who built an apparel empire in America’s image.

“Genuine Authentic” (HarperCollins), by New York Daily News columnist Michael Gross, is the dishier of the two. But in the end, it paints a more sympathetic portrait than “Ralph Lauren: The Man, The Vision, The Style” (Rizzoli), a sugary tome penned with the designer’s full cooperation by British fashion journalist Colin McDowell.

Gross says Lauren asked him to write his book, but that the two couldn’t agree on the terms. In the author’s note, he writes that Lauren approached him in 1999, but after 10 months of negotiations, the two couldn’t agree on one thing. Lauren did not want anything written about an affair he had with model Kim Nye in the early ‘90s, though it was documented at the time. “I can only think that he didn’t want to be revealed as being just like everyone else,” Gross said in a recent phone interview from New York. “He wants to be special, he has ever since he was a kid.”

Lauren grew up Ralphie Lifshitz in a two-bedroom apartment in the Bronx. (He changed his name at 19, after years of teasing.) His father, Frank, dreamed of being a fine artist but settled for painting interiors. Frieda, his mother, wanted her youngest son to be a rabbi.

But Lauren didn’t take well to the hand-swatting teaching style of the yeshivas he attended. “The image of him ripping off his yarmulke

Eventually, Lauren landed in public school, where he was more interested in sports than in studying. Even then, he was developing an affinity for the transformative quality of clothes.

At school, Lauren “styled” his friends, adjusting the poufs of their pompadours, writes Gross. He cruised thrift stores for tweed blazers, Army jackets and other garments he perceived to have historical integrity. At the movies, he studied every button and seam on suits worn by his heroes, Cary Grant and Steve McQueen.

After a brief stint at City College, Lauren began working in the tie department of that WASP bastion, Brooks Brothers. But it was his personal wardrobe -- custom-tailored suits he insisted be outfitted with ticket pockets and other old-fashioned details -- that garnered notice, according to the book. Lauren was even able to persuade the widely circulated apparel trade paper DNR to write about his unusual style, which ran the gamut from aviator hats to riding pants.

In 1967, Lauren started selling his own neckties. They were wider than was fashionable at the time, and more costly -- $7 to $15, compared with the average $5, Gross writes. He named the line Polo because it sounded elegant, and sold it to Bloomingdale’s, Paul Stuart and Neiman Marcus, but not to stores such as Macy’s, which he felt were beneath him. When he presented the line to then-fashion leader Bloomingdale’s, the merchandise manager told him he’d have to make the ties narrower and sew Bloomies labels in them, the book explains. Lauren walked out. “He has an extraordinary tenacity and an unwillingness to take no for an answer,” Gross said. Of course, Bloomingdale’s took the ties anyway.

In time, Lauren expanded his menswear offerings and introduced women’s oxford shirts, each with a tiny polo player on the cuff. A designer women’s collection would follow, along with home furnishings. So, too, would bridge lines such as Polo Sport, and the ubiquitous knit polo shirts.

Gross does a fine job of revealing how the illusion of heritage and luxury, cultivated through lavish runway shows and advertising campaigns, sustains what is essentially a licensing business. After all, it’s perfume and inexpensive polo shirts, made by licensees, not $4,000 gowns, that have made Lauren a billionaire. (The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Lauren is trying to buy back the rights to his “core department store apparel” from his biggest licensee, Jones Apparel Group Inc. Sales of two major lines -- Lauren and Ralph -- generated nearly $600 million in 2002 for Jones and royalties of $65 million to Lauren’s company, Polo Ralph Lauren Corp.)

Gross’ book also reveals a darker side of the man he calls the “haberdasher of modern ambition.” Dozens of ex-employees offer anecdotes suggesting Lauren can be controlling and egocentric. “Some of the very things that are the keys to his success, which are all positive when viewed in that light, are negative when viewed on the human level,” Gross said. “Obsessiveness is a necessity if you are a fashion designer, but it’s not necessarily the best management tool, particularly when you are trying to manage people you don’t control, such as the press.”

In the book, he offers this example: In the late 1990s, Lauren believed Harper’s Bazaar editor Liz Tilberis, who died of ovarian cancer in 1999, was not devoting enough space to him, so he pulled all of his advertising from the magazine. “When she was dying, he was engaged in a secret war against her,” Gross said.

Lauren’s public relations director wouldn’t comment on any aspect of Gross’ book. The spokeswoman, Nancy Murray, also denied that the designer had any part in writing McDowell’s book, as some have suggested. “It was completely his own work,” she said, adding, “Ralph hasn’t read either book, nor does he plan to. He’s pretty busy designing.”

McDowell’s prose oozes with fawning cliches. Lauren “had the pulse of the nation,” was “master of the soundbite,” had the fashion world “open-mouthed” at his “irresistible rise.” “Ralph Lauren: The Man, The Vision, The Style” whitewashes the designer’s childhood, his business, his marriage, and leaves the reader with the impression that Lauren is as perfect as one of his flawless ad spreads.

His houses, too, are immaculate, decorated by a creative services team that scours the globe for art and antiques. One has a hard time summoning the appropriate sympathy for revelations such as this by McDowell: “Finding the right property is never easy for people like the Laurens. Their fastidiousness demands that they take nothing second class, and their wealth means they never have to compromise.”

He describes the minimalist Fifth Avenue apartment; the mansion in Bedford, N.Y.; the Hamptons beach house; the colonial villa in Jamaica; and the Double RL cattle ranch in Colorado with old chaps, Navajo rugs and saddles displayed in “apparently random perfection.”

Although the exhaustive descriptions and photos are a daunting display of extravagance, they are also strangely captivating. The book may read like ad copy, but it’s entertaining in the way that watching an episode of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” or going on a Universal Studios back-lot tour are.

In a phone interview from London, McDowell said he wanted to put Lauren in the cultural context of his time. “I’m not interested in secondhand gossip, so-and-so who once met Ralph in a restaurant in 1974, who told so-and-so something,” he said. “That isn’t what I wanted to do.”