“It’s about broadening your scope through history and living your life,” says Lauren. “Tune in and pay attention.”
Lauren never went to any fashion schools. He took a few business courses at City College in Manhattan, but his professional qualifications were not like those of his competitors. What Lauren did have, however, was the ability to read the market and sense future trends. It was by tuning into his market and paying attention to his consumers that he was able to give them exactly what they wanted – and more.
“There is something exciting about buying something you have to save for, as opposed to people who have had these things all their lives,” says Lauren. “There is more of a discerning taste that you develop.” That is how Lauren explains his fashion sensibility: he did not have much money growing up, so he made sure to spend it wisely. If he was going to throw away his money, he was going to do it on something really special, and something that was going to last.
Now that Lauren is in charge of a billion dollar empire, he takes the time to listen to whoever he has to – whoever he can – to inform him of where the market is headed. At company meetings, he offers his interns the opportunity to speak out. He wants to hear the opinions and tastes of the up and coming generation; they are the ones who will be deciding his fate down the road.
So, too, does Lauren pay attention to his children. His son David recalls, “When my friends and I used to walk into the store on 72nd Street, there was a feeling that this was for an older person. But my dad said, 'Okay, watch, I can make Polo really hip to you. Someplace that you and your friends will want to shop. I'm not just about mahogany paneling.”
Lauren also does some stealth spying in his own stores, watching customers and observing their shopping preferences. One particular fall day, Lauren visited a Polo store in Connecticut and made a striking discovery: mothers were leaving with full shopping bags while their daughters were leaving empty-handed.
After that, Polo was no longer just about English country houses. Lauren’s runway models began sporting hooded sweatshirts, bracelets, and even dreadlocks – all, of course, beneath his classic tweed jackets and the like. He also created a new line of clothing called Rugby. “I felt we were not connecting as much to young people from 14 to 29, so I created Rugby, which is more irreverent and schoolboy in feel than Polo,” said Lauren. He was not going to let that demographic escape him any longer.
Lauren often likes to think back to Steve McQueen’s classic line in 1968’s “The Thomas Crown Affair.” “I did it once. I can do it again,” he says. By tuning in and paying attention to the tastes of different generations, Lauren has managed to stay one step ahead of the game – and always on top.
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