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(CNN Spanish) - Who is Ralph Lauren? If your answer is “the creator of the Polo brand”, you are correct. But did you know that the fashion icon was born in The Bronx, its first design was ties 4 inches wide instead of 3 and that its first customer was the Bloomingdale's department store?
HBO premieres the documentary “Very Ralph” in which Ralph Lauren himself speaks frankly about his childhood, his marriage of five decades, the first days of his company, his response to criticism, his ingenious multi-page advertising campaigns and how It was that he defined his iconic style in a 100% American brand.
Ralph Lifshitz was born on October 14, 1939 within a Jewish family in New York. From an early age he had an interest in fashion by buying various clothes in Salvation Army stores and combining them for personal use. One of his main influences was the actor and dancer Fred Astaire and the way he dressed so elegantly.
In the special, Lauren says that he was always a fan of sports and that Polo sport was very elegant unlike basketball or football and it was when it occurred to him that this could be the name of his brand. The person in charge of changing his surname from Lifshitz to Lauren was his brother Jerry, who says in the documentary that his Jewish last name would not take them anywhere and it was then that the brand “Polo, Ralph Lauren” emerged.
For more than 50 years he has been part of the fashion iconography of the United States. Define and translate your vision and inspiration into one of the most recognized brands in the world. In "Very Ralph", when he enters his sixth decade in business, Lauren reflects on his journey from a guy in the Bronx who didn't know what a fashion designer was, to become the emblem of the American style worldwide .
Ralph Lauren's collections tell a story; colors, textures and fabrics are elements that play a very important role and films from the 30s, 40s and 50s will always be present. "My family is before anyone else," says Lauren and says that his muse of inspiration is his wife Ricky.
The two-hour-long special features vivid 50-year-old archives of the fashion brand. His wife Ricky Lauren and their three children, Andrew, Dylan and David Lauren talk about how the designer himself is when he is not designing or planning a collection. Among the personalities that appear in this special are Anna Wintour, Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Jessica Chastain, André Leon Talley, Naomi Campbell, Wei Koh, Martha Stuart, Karl Lagerfeld and Hillary Clinton, among others.
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#CateBlanchett and #ClaireFoy join Ralph and Ricky Lauren in London for a special screening of #VeryRalph at The Royal Academy. The new documentary about # RalphLauren's life and work is now available in the US exclusively on #HBO. #RLRedCarpet #RLCollection
A post shared by Ralph Lauren (@ralphlauren) on Nov 15, 2019 at 4:12 pm PST
“Very Ralph” reveals to the man that, throughout a career of more than five decades, he has become a symbol of American style worldwide and who opened the first branch of a brand in 1986 on Madison Avenue in New York completely breaking the paradigms of large department stores at the time of the Big Apple.
Don't miss the premiere of the documentary “Very Ralph” on HBO on November 26 at 9:00 pm for the entire region.
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