Ralph Lauren's Timeless Look

Filed in archive Fashion Week on February 21, 2010

"Sometimes Ralph Lauren does exactly what he always does: throws a tweed frock coat over a floral georgette skirt, and for some reason you choose that moment to go absolutely bananas for the tweed coat and swear this year it will be your look." So says a recent Fashion Week review in The New York Times.

Lauren has been around seemingly forever (forty years, according to their website), making classic and beautiful clothes.

I've always been fascinated by the designer - hardly a surprise since he and I share a name in common. In college I sported blazers and copied "the look" - very East Coast, very Connecticut.

"His genius, frequently noted, lies in his ability to exploit a longing most of us feel to elevate our ordinary bourgeois existence and adapt it, at least superficially, to resemble the more seductive contours of our social betters," says The New York Times.

I think it speaks worlds of me that I like his fashion, but my WASPish roots yearn for riding crops and saddle messenger handbags. Perhaps, as the quote implies, I'm simply a poser.

Mr. Lauren re-upped his contract to keep designing for Polo Ralph Lauren for another three years, when he turns 73.

This is great news for him and for his empire but, truth be told, "the look" he's created will be with us forever. He (and I) will never go out of style.

Photo above is from The New York Times.