Ralph Lauren’s Fading Jeans in our Sustainable Age. Commentary by Willi Paul - PlanetShifter.com Magazine & Networks

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Ralph Lauren’s Fading Jeans in our Sustainable Age. Commentary by Willi Paul - PlanetShifter.com Magazine & Networks

“What began forty years ago with a collection of ties has grown into an entire world, redefining American style. Ralph Lauren has always stood for providing quality products, creating worlds and inviting people to take part in our dream. We were the innovators of lifestyle advertisements that tell a story and the first to create stores that encourage customers to participate in that lifestyle.”

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I don’t value Ralph Lauren’s clothes for his lifestyle frame but because they are well designed and last a long time. And I admit that I own four pieces from his collection. Style and values for too few but that does last a long time. A sustainability paradox.

I spoke with Mr. Lauren’s Corporate PR and Communications staff twice but their Director Ryan Lalley elected to ignore my messages. You can try if you wish: 212.318.7116. Ralph Lauren’s web site thus became my only official source of data on the designer’s sustainability mantra. I was interested in where the firm obtains its raw materials (“sourcing”) and what whether the current labor practices benefit both Mr. Lauren, his investor’s and the machinists themselves?

But again, there is no mention of any green or sustainability principles here – except an aged Earth Day site with no buzz at Rugby.

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My thesis: the American Lifestyle that Mr. Lauren creates for a few consumers is now largely clique and stained from an old American Way. His brand strikes me as a fantasy play where a few rich clients invest in - and strut around in - an image parade for each other.

What are the messages? What are the metaphors, symbols from the upper rich side? A closet full of dusty shoe horn investments; too many one nighter sweaters; drop dead Playboy shapes and five hour hair dos from heaven. No global warming in here, Ralph.

Sustainable or green values, in addition to the manufacturing-related ones above, obviously counter the Lauren lifestyle. “The sustainable wardrobe lifestyle” is a more about shared values than the clothes themselves. The Green Consumer has changed clothe buying from “must have that gown to gotta donate to Goodwill.” From dressy to casual to grunge with a bag of recyclables. Eco-peeps are more global and community integrated than the RL horse show lifestyle. Sacrifice for the planet and for our children’s future drives the symbols and metaphors in the Sustainable Age.

There is no second hand clothes ethic at RL. We just can’t give them away!

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"The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement… It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."

-- Historian and writer James Truslow Adams coined the phrase "American Dream" in his 1931 book The Epic of America