Ralph Lauren on His New Furniture Line, a Potential Hotel and What Makes a Home
It’s no secret Ralph Lauren has had a lifelong love affair with cars.
With a personal and almost priceless collection that includes a 1929 Blower Bentley, a 1938 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic Coupe, a 1955 Mercedes Benz 300 SL Gullwing Coupe and a McLaren F1 Race Car — not to mention several Porsches, Jaguars and Lamborghinis — Lauren’s cars are prized for their rarity and caliber.
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So it’s only fitting that his 2024 home line is called the “Modern Driver Collection,” which will be presented on the first floor of Palazzo Ralph Lauren during Milan Design Week.
“I’ve always been inspired by things built for a purpose. The cars I’ve collected over the years have a kind of functional beauty. Most of them were hand built and designed for speed. Every detail was meticulously considered and crafted. My ideas come from my life, my work, from everyday living. Cars have always been a part of that,” says Lauren, sitting in his memento-filled office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan — complete, of course, with several models of the cars in his collection.
“Modern Driver” features clean lines of modern furnishings such as the RI-CF1 chair that has the same high-tech fiber that shapes Formula 1 race cars with 71 layers of tissue carbon laid by hand to form a strong and lightweight cantilevered frame. Carbon fiber is also used in the lounge chair and carbon fiber side tables. A classic Beckford table lamp is tightly wrapped in a metal wire mesh inspired by the grilles of Lauren’s Blower Bentley. Carbon fiber dinnerware is paired with a speedometer-inspired plate, while throw pillows are influenced by the interior of automobiles with perforated leather and RL zipper pulls in silver nickel.
The collection is the latest in a string of home furnishings that Lauren has introduced over the last 40 years or more — indeed, he was among the first, if not the first, fashion designers to go so deeply into the home. They all reflect his lifestyle and passions, with themes ranging from safari, seaside, estate, western and country to bohemian, Adirondack, uptown and downtown.
The 84-year-old Lauren, dressed casually in black suede trousers, a black turtleneck and New Balance sneakers, says it was personal experience that sparked his desire to design home collections.
What About Those Sheets?
“My wife [Ricky] and I had just gotten married and we were walking through one of the shopping centers in Westchester and she said, ‘We need some sheets.’ She showed me the sheets and I thought, ‘What’s with these flowers?’ I was just married — or I was going to be married — and this was changing my mind,” Lauren says, laughing.
He realized he needed to take the situation into his own hands.
“What I did was design something that I wanted to sleep on. I took it from the shirt that I wore, to the bed. I thought, ‘Why can’t I do an oxford sheet that would be great in pink and blue and very Polo and very classic?'” he recalls. He used chambrays, oxford cloths and paisleys and details like mother-of-pearl button closures on pillow cases. Not that it was easy: The menswear fabrics required a special loom while the sheets were 100 percent cotton, which was rare in those days.
“They sold out, and people responded to it and asked what else can you do? I went from there to other things,” he says.
Lauren added new products and categories that excited him. “I didn’t have a sheet that said you’re going to do a whole line. I did it one by one. It was expensive to do. No one understood it. J.P. Stevens was our licensee, and the guy who ran it, David Tracy [vice chairman] supported me.”
Lauren recalls he had spoken to Marvin Traub, then chairman and chief executive officer of Bloomingdale’s and a longtime supporter, who heard that the designer was doing sheets. “A head guy came from Bloomingdale’s and said, ‘We love what you are doing, and we would like to do more.’ I said, ‘I would love to do a collection.” The sheets were one thing, and I wanted to do towels. The towels that everyone was showing were ugly, and I wanted to do a real beautiful towel that wasn’t available.”
Oprah Winfrey, in fact, told him that it was her dream to fill her house with Ralph Lauren towels and bath sheets when she started making money. And she eventually did.
Lauren’s first home collection in 1983 encompassed bed and bath linens, fabric and wall coverings, floor coverings and dinnerware. It launched with four signature lines: Log Cabin, Thoroughbred, Jamaica and New England. Furniture and lighting followed in 1985 and 2000, respectively.
“It was about how people live and how they enjoy their life,” he says.
Ralph’s World
As for which he likes more, fashion or interiors, the designer says they are both equal. After all, they are all part of the Ralph Lauren World.
“Everything has to do with quality. Everything had to do with a personal love. It was an idea I had going from menswear to womenswear to childrenswear. I love both [fashion and home] because you live in both. I’ve had the good fortune of being able to have my own homes.”
Lauren and his wife have five homes, including a pre-war Fifth Avenue apartment; a historic Bedford, N.Y., estate; their Colorado ranch, christened Double RL, with timber lodges and barns set on 17,000 acres; High Rock and White Orchid houses in Jamaica, set on the grounds of the Round Hill Resort, and a Montauk getaway at the tip of Long Island.
The Double RL Ranch, for example, is filled with Native American paintings, pottery, woven baskets, serapes, weavings and trade blankets, while the Bedford home features tartans, 17th-century pieces, Persian rugs, twig furniture and an oil painting of horses. The White Orchid home in Jamaica is informal and designed with a clean, barefoot kind of luxuriousness. There’s a white-on-white living room, no art on the walls and a feeling of being on a boat.
They are each designed differently but represent Lauren’s many inspirations and eclectic tastes. He lives differently in each home, and they are a personal expression of his vision. Despite the various aesthetic styles, each of the homes share a penchant for layering, a feeling that pieces have been collected, and, above all, a sense of comfort.
His Madison Avenue office also reflects the designer’s eclecticism. It’s a magpie’s heaven, chock full of art, photos, books, his children’s artwork, and assorted objects that inspire him, including teddy bears in Ralph Lauren ensembles such as a pinstripe suit, navy blue and herringbone blazers, a bomber jacket or evening attire. There are black-and-white photographs, a giant wooden tennis racquet, scores of shoes, a 1950s model plane suspended from the ceiling, as well as a bicycle leaning against one wall. A huge artwork of a cowboy and a horse hangs behind his desk, while on a table are model figurines of Marlon Brando from “The Godfather,” Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands and from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, and Jack Nicholson as The Joker in “Batman.”
After all, Lauren often says he sees life as a movie.
Addressing whether the home collection came before the house, or did the house spark the collection, Lauren says, “As I was doing it, I was living it. I think the design came first. I had the clothes for Montauk. I used the clothes and the personal love of different things, and giving them the excitement that wasn’t there. It [home furnishings] was a dead industry. It was an old man’s or ladies’ industry. It was boring. The mixture of home, design and fashion was something that I believed in and it worked.
“I never thought in terms of ‘fashion, fashion.’ It was what do I want, and what do I have?” he says in his soft voice.
From a Car to a Chair
For example, he points to the saddle leather carbon fiber chairs in his office, which were designed in 2003. He designed the RL-CF1 chairs after he bought a McLaren F1 Race Car, and the design is based on it.
“I was in the McLaren and I’m sitting in it and looked at that arm and thought it was really beautiful and could make a beautiful something. This chair is my favorite piece. It was totally mine. I designed this chair, and I’m very proud of it. It works, you sit in it and feels so good,” Lauren says. That chair is also in his New York apartment (in black leather) and the Purple Label Clothing room in his store on Madison Avenue.
Lauren instinctually knows whether a specific piece of furniture or a glass is “Ralph Lauren,” or doesn’t fit in with his aesthetic, just as he does with his fashions.
“I think because I do lifestyle. I knew that if you didn’t do lifestyle, it’s just a sheet. Well, they’re Ralph Lauren oxford sheets and you say OK. But when you see the oxford sheets, and the towels and the layout in the house, we did settings,” he says, adding he created complete settings and environments that were revolutionary.
“It’s a point of view and a vision,” continues Lauren. “I did things that were Ralph Lauren, that were me. That I wanted for myself, whether I was living in Connecticut or Telluride. Nowadays you walk into Telluride and you start to see some nice home furnishings.”
Last year Lauren published a lavish coffee table book titled “Ralph Lauren, A Way of Living,” (Rizzoli), that features each of his residences. It’s the first time all his homes have been shown together. Each of the homes is in a completely different style, and Lauren is asked if there’s a common thread that runs through them.
“They’re all the things I love. When you go to a fashion show, what’s the common thread? I’m not an interior designer. I didn’t go to fashion school. How did I do women’s dresses? I don’t know. These were the things I did. Don’t forget, I have a team. I developed a team for home, I developed a team for everything. It’s like, ‘let me show you where we’re going,'” he says thoughtfully.
Personally, he doesn’t feel more comfortable in one of his homes over another. “No, you can look through the book, when you start to think about Ralph Lauren, it’s not cookie cutter. It’s not like a fake log cabin. The sheets and towels and blankets and the initials on some things. It was all the things that have style,” he says.
Sheets to Coffee
Turning to the growing hospitality aspect of Lauren’s $6.4 billion business, the designer says he never would have imagined that he’d see customers line up on 72nd Street and Madison Avenue for Ralph’s Coffee, a venture he began in 2014.
“It’s the dream. You’re living in Manhattan, and you want to go for coffee. People are in the coffee shop to get the feeling of something that makes them feel good. It’s more beyond my dreams. You do it because you love something. Everyone’s got coffee, but why this? You’ve got to do it, and you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing,” Lauren says passionately. First introduced in New York, Ralph’s Coffee has expanded to Chicago, Miami, Washington, D.C., Munich, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuala Lumpur, mainland China, Singapore, Dubai and Qatar. Ralph’s Coffee trucks and bicycle trikes travel the globe.
He points out that the Polo Bar in New York is always packed, and he’d like to expand his restaurants — which consist of RL Restaurant in Chicago, The Polo Bar in Manhattan, Ralph’s in Paris, The Bar at Ralph Lauren in Milan, and Ralph’s Bar in Chengdu, China — around the globe. Eventually, he’d like to open a hotel, but he’s not ready to reveal any details about that. “It’s definitely in the cards, but we have not done it yet. Many people have asked, ‘why don’t you do it?’ We’ll do it when we find the right spot,” he says.
They might start with one hotel first. “It’s another business, it’s another world. Picking locations and what you want to look like, and who you are, and expressing it. Again, it’s lifestyle living. How do you live? How would you like to live if you could afford it? This is not about how much everything costs, it’s about how to do it, and do you believe it? There’s a coffee shop on 72nd Street. I didn’t know two years ago I would do a coffee shop there. We planned all these things and we started to work on it. Go and look. On a sunny day, there are people sitting outside,” he says.
It all seems to be part of the idea that people want to get as close to Lauren’s world as possible. They want to drink his coffee and eat his mother’s brownies.
“It’s the passion. It’s the love of doing things like that. We all go to coffee shops and we all go to restaurants. We all clothe ourselves. Why not with the good stuff as best you can?” he asks. Lauren tried a lot of coffees before deciding on a special blend with La Colombe. He also ate a lot of hamburgers before zeroing in on the best one for the Polo Bar.
Turning back to the topic of cars, what’s the fascination?
“Most men love cars,” the designer says. “It’s the artistry. To me, it’s the art, and the driving, and the activity of driving a sports car, which I always loved. I also have Jeeps. They all connect to the clothes. And the clothes connect to the cars.”
Discussing how he decides which Ferrari, Mercedes-Benz, Lamborghini, Jaguar or Porsche to buy, Lauren explains, “It’s like art. Ferraris are known for racing, and they have a speed sensibility. At the same time, they’re status. A lot of Wall Street guys and people in the fashion business love cars. Now the cars are more beautiful. They’re more art pieces, they’re artistic. They get shown now in a museum,” as some of his have been.
He calls his automobiles, “a collection of pieces of art.”
“I’m driving, it’s not dead. In art, they’re dead off the wall. You can drive, you can hear the sound, you look at the beauty of it. The color red is beautiful. It’s all excitement. What do you wear when you’re in a Ferrari? You wear a cool leather jacket. You take it and make that Ferrari a style. It’s not only Ferrari, it’s Mercedes, it’s Porsches, they all represent something,” he says.
“Cars inspired this watch,” adds Lauren, pointing to his Ralph Lauren driving watch that features a screwed wooden bezel that looks like the wooden steering wheels found in some vintage cars.
The “Modern Driver Collection” is the first to be introduced under the new strategic collaboration between Ralph Lauren and Haworth Lifestyle Design. The made-to-order furniture is crafted in Italy. Haworth will be responsible for opening a number of standalone Ralph Lauren Home stores to present the brand’s lifestyle vision across all categories of home, from lighting and floor coverings to tabletop and gifts.
Dario Rinero, CEO of Haworth Lifestyle Design, says, “Ralph Lauren is a globally recognized design leader and set the standard for luxury lifestyle. The new Modern Driver collection combines Ralph Lauren’s signature style with excellence of Italian-made craftsmanship, drawing on Haworth Lifestyle Design’s experience in producing luxury furniture.”
According to Lauren, “I see Manhattan as the Modern Driver spot. It’s clean. It’s busy, it’s noisy. You look for sleek, white walls.…You’re living in that modern space and all of a sudden, you need the clothes to wear in that space. You can’t have it from a thrift shop. I look at things in a total sensibility. I need the whole thing. I need the shoe, I need the jacket, I need the sunglasses. These are businesses in the world that we live in.”
Over the years, Lauren’s business has evolved from menswear to womenswear, childrenswear, home and myriad categories. “It started with a tie,” Lauren says. But he had no idea when he was selling ties from a drawer at the Empire State Building that it would evolve into a lifestyle brand.
“I didn’t think about it because I had no need for it. The tie turned into a very big thing. I made wider ties and patterns and they were handmade. I wanted to do something that wasn’t done in the tie business. That was a very big thing. Ties were major. Could you imagine if I never did a tie, I never would have gone anywhere. That tie was the beginning,” Lauren says. When he named the company Polo, Lauren says he was thinking about a way of living.
“I like preppie things, more than I do fashion,” he admits.
Lauren doesn’t have a favorite home and enjoys them all equally. “It has a lot to do with land, where they are. I don’t have favorites. I love the dimension of doing different things. I love log cabins and I love a Fifth Avenue apartment…,” he says.
So how does he decide where he wants to vacation?
“Whatever my wife wants,” he jokes.
But what in his opinion makes a good home?
He doesn’t even pause for thought, immediately answering with one word.
“Love.”
Launch Gallery: A Look Into Ralph Lauren’s Love for Home Design and Cars
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