Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren is an American fashion house founded in New York in 1967, and it sells both genuine luxury and mass-market sportswear under a single name. Purple Label and Ralph Lauren Collection are made largely in Italy and priced like European luxury. Polo Ralph Lauren, the line most people picture, is premium clothing made at scale. Lauren Ralph Lauren is a step below that again.

Ralph Lauren is also one of the brands that keeps a place in our ranking of the most popular luxury brands online, and the quiet-luxury conversation has done most of the lifting.

Is Ralph Lauren a luxury brand?

At the top, yes. Ralph Lauren runs a ladder of labels rather than one line, and where a piece sits on that ladder decides whether it counts as luxury.

Purple Label is the apex, launched in 1994 and tailored largely in Italy from the finest fabrics the house can buy. Ralph Lauren Collection is the women’s runway line at the same level. Polo Ralph Lauren, the core sportswear label below them, is premium but made in volume and discounted often. Lauren Ralph Lauren is the accessible women’s tier. Double RL, the workwear line Ralph Lauren started in 1993, sells selvedge denim and repro Americana to a cult of its own, and RLX covers performance and golf.

The quiet-luxury label fits the top of the house and not the bottom. Purple Label and Collection are logo-free, made in Italy, and cut from the same cloth as brands that cost more. The Polo lines are the opposite, built on a visible emblem that has sold for fifty years. Ralph Lauren is comfortable being read both ways, and that range is a large part of why it reaches so many buyers. We break the labels down in our guide to the Ralph Lauren collections.

Behind the brand

History of Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lifshitz grew up in the Bronx and started the company in 1967 with a line of wide, boldly patterned neckties sold under the name Polo. Menswear followed quickly. In 1971 he opened a freestanding Polo store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the first any American designer had taken. The mesh Polo shirt, with its small embroidered polo player, arrived in 1972 and has barely changed since.

Film sealed the look. Ralph Lauren dressed the men in The Great Gatsby in 1974 and supplied the menswear Diane Keaton wore in Annie Hall in 1977. Out of ties, prep and the western ranch he built an American idea of luxury that owed more to Newport and the Rockies than to Paris, and that idea still runs through every line.

Ralph Lauren Corporation went public in 1997 and trades on the New York Stock Exchange. Ralph Lauren, born in 1939, stepped down as chief executive in 2015 and stayed on in an executive and creative role.

The Ralph Lauren collection

The permanent objects are the mesh Polo shirt, the cable-knit cricket sweater, the oxford button-down and the shawl-collar cardigan. The Polo shirt itself comes in three main fits, classic, custom slim and slim, so the same piqué cotton reads as either boxy and traditional or close to the body. The Polo Bear, first knitted into sweaters in the early 1990s, has become a collectible in its own right, and the best examples resell for several times their retail price. Purple Label handles the tailoring, Double RL the denim and workwear, and Ralph Lauren Collection the women’s runway.

The mounted-polo-player emblem is the house’s signature. US Polo Assn. is a separate brand, licensed by the United States Polo Association, and Ralph Lauren has taken it to court several times over its own use of a player-on-horseback logo. The two companies are not related, and only one of them is the fashion house.

Home is a real business here, not a licensing afterthought. The furniture, bedding and tableware carry the same references as the clothes. Fragrance is large too, and it dates to the launch of the Polo cologne in 1978, with Romance following twenty years later in 1998.

Craftsmanship and materials

Quality tracks the tier. Purple Label suits are made in Italy from mills such as Loro Piana and Zegna, with hand-finished detailing comparable to high-end European tailoring. Polo is produced at scale and priced for it, with the make and the fabric stepping down accordingly.

The middle of the range is the best value, to our eye. The shetland knits, the cashmere sweaters and the oxford-cloth shirts are heavy enough to last, plain enough to keep wearing for years, and easy to find secondhand in good condition. The cotton Polo shirts and knits do shrink if you tumble-dry them hot, so wash cool and dry flat if you want them to keep their fit. Buy the classics well and you get most of the house’s substance without the Purple Label markup.

Where to buy Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren sells through its own stores and website, department stores, a wide wholesale network and a large outlet channel. That reach is why it discounts far more visibly than the European houses. Purple Label is the exception, limited to flagship stores and a short list of stockists. The secondhand market is deep as well, especially for vintage Polo and the Polo Bear knits. For where the brand fits against its peers, see our guides to the best quiet luxury brands and the best suit brands for men.

Ralph Lauren price

The spread is the widest of any house in this directory. The iconic mesh Polo shirt costs around $110, and a Purple Label suit runs from roughly $4,000 to $8,000. Because the wholesale and outlet networks discount on a schedule, the middle tiers rarely need to be bought at full price. Pay up for the shetland sweater and the oxford shirt when you find the ones you want, and wait for a markdown on almost everything else.