Ralph Lauren, who has always taken a cinematic approach to his collections, is finally the star of his own movie.
Designers who appear in the 108-minute film include Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Vera Wang and Jason Wu, while Martha Stewart, Tina Brown, Ken Burns, Joel Schumacher, Naomi Campbell, Woody Allen, Tom Brokaw, Paul Goldberger, André Leon Talley, Buffy Birrittella, Tyson Beckford, Jessica Chastain, Kanye West, and Hillary Clinton also offer up comments.
“He’s a very shy man. He’s not a guy who opens up easily. He’s very private and he’s shy and we got to know each other pretty well, and he ended up with a lot of trust in me,” said Lacy. “She knows her business a lot better than I know her business,” said Lauren, who gave Lacy access to the company’s archive downtown with all the collections and the ad campaigns. “She did a lot of research and spoke to people in the company. The doors were open to her,” said Lauren.
Interestingly, Lauren’s older brother, Jerry, admits he was the person who decided that he wanted to change their last name from Lifshitz to Lauren, and asked if his brothers, Lenny and Ralph, wanted to join in. “It was a tough name to live with. I never wanted to escape my origins,” said Jerry Lauren.
Throughout the film and during the course of his life, there don’t seem to be too many major disappointments, except for early business troubles, which Lauren admits in the film he was afraid to tell his father about. “He does talk about the criticisms, and that if he listened to the critical remarks he would have quit,” said Lacy.
“We don’t want the person to wince every time they see it, if they don’t like one or two shots. It’s not worth it,” she said. “I saw it with Ralph and we both cried. I think it’s a very emotional experience to watch your life, in a way that you might not have told that story. He didn’t know what I was going to do. Some of it was a surprise to him. At one point he looked at me and said, ‘I could never have made this film. If I could have, I would have,’” she said.