RALPH LAUREN & ROBERT REDFORD | THE GREAT GATSBIES

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Ralph Lauren giving a “Three Days of the Condor” + “Jeremiah Johnson” vibe. Via Mister Mort

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These two will forever be linked (in more ways than one) by The Great Gatsby.  Robert Redford

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From The New York Times Jan 12, 2003—

In nearly every rags-to-riches story, particularly ones involving the rag trade, the protagonist learns about life from the movies. Norman Norell, who was born Norman Levinson in Noblesville, Ind., owed much of his big-city panache to a star-struck youth. Manolo Blahnik, the son of banana growers, escaped the isolation of the Canary Islands by going to the cinema. John Weitz, whose bold life could have been a movie, married a Hollywood ingénue and fathered a pair of directors.

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The movies figure even more heavily in the life of Ralph Lauren, who, on the occasion of his 35th year in business, is the subject of two new books — ”Genuine Authentic” (HarperCollins), a biography by Michael Gross, and ”Ralph Lauren: The Man, the Vision, the Style” (Rizzoli), a coffee-table tome by Colin McDowell, a British fashion writer. Mr. McDowell reports that two of Mr. Lauren’s favorite movies are ”Laura” and ”The Philadelphia Story,” and that their stylish wardrobes offered him ”an impeccable visual education.” But, less impeccably, the author neglects to mention that the clothes for those pictures were done, respectively, by Bonnie Cashin and Adrian — nor do we learn if Mr. Lauren was moved by the wit or the dialogue. It is not for nothing that he is our genius of the superficial.

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And then there is ”The Great Gatsby” — not the novel, but the 1974 movie starring Robert Redford. Mr. Lauren provided clothes for the male leads and was rewarded, the writers agree, with extensive publicity. At least Mr. Gross was willing to hack through the hype and half-truths shading Mr. Lauren’s involvement in the film to give credit where it was due: to the costume designer Theoni V. Aldredge, who was so miffed about the kudos for Mr. Lauren that, Mr. Gross said, she tried to get Paramount to take him off the screen credits.

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All his career, Mr. Lauren has compared what he does to the making of a movie, and it’s easy to see him that way, in part because he grasps the mis-en-scène of a life far more readily than its substance, and in part because we have the extraordinary montage of advertising images of log cabins and Newport pavilions created for him by the photographer Bruce Weber. We can actually see that life.

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Robert Redford in The Great Gatsby

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I think it’s more useful to look at Mr. Lauren, and the source of our fascination with him, in a literary way. And the obvious parallel is Fitzgerald’s bootlegger, Gatsby. Both came from nowhere; both prize the trappings of old money but have made theirs in new ways; both surround themselves with people, yet are essentially asocial; both are single-minded in their quests, and much as Mr. Lauren’s frequent references to his hanging out with Grant and Sinatra cause one to wince, Gatsby’s dreamy accounts of living like a young rajah made Nick Carraway suppress an incredulous laugh. (”The very phrases were worn so threadbare that they evoked no image except that of a turbaned ‘character’ leaking sawdust at every pore.”)

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Of all the famous American designers, past or present, none is as challenging, fascinating and tempting to write about as Ralph Lauren. Here is a man who had the audacity not only to dream bigger than anyone else, projecting a world of absolute American gorgeousness, but also to utter, without irony or apparent loss of self, ”I am more Cary Grant than Cary Grant.”

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Kind of Like The Beatles saying they were more famous than Jesus…

Look, we all have our moments when we are basking in the glow of our talents and success, and silly things are said and then taken out of context.  The article is definitely a fascinating read, but came off as a scathing inditement of a man who has made more contributions to American fashion than any other single designer in recent history.  Ralph Lauren is the master stylist of our times.  Without him, the fashion landscape would be a whole lot less interesting and tasty.

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