“I don’t design clothes, I design dreams.” – Ralph Lauren

I’m on a Ralph Lauren kick. The entrepreneur, not the brand (but I am also very into that, too!).

One concept that he’s turned me onto: designing your life to be like a movie, and you’re the star.

I’ve always been into the idea of “being the director of your own movie.” It makes life more adventurous and malleable. I use to call myself, jokingly (but not really), the “manifest cowboy.” Meaning, I am great at figuring out what I want my life to be like and going out and getting it.

Admittedly, I get soft sometimes. As I’ve gotten more “successful”, I’ve occasionally let off the gas pedal. This creates a cycle that limits my dreams to what’s possible. While its ok, I think, to have seasons of calm, I’m scared as hell that small dreams will become a habit.

And so, this is one of the reasons why I’m so into Ralph Lauren at the moment. He’s done such a beautiful job of turning his life into a movie.

For him, it started with idolizing movie stars, athletes, and the America dream.

And he used clothing as a way to express that life he dreamt of. And ultimately sold that dream to millions of Americans.

Below are a bunch of quotes from him that show this idea. There not all from the same interview or book.

My sources on him have been: an interview on Charlie Rose, Very Ralph (documentary), Ralph Lauren (book), Ralph Lauren in His Own Fashion (book).

• “I would have loved to have been a movie star. I thought that was cool and that I’d have lots of girlfriends. I just didn’t think it was possible, so I never went to Hollywood to try, but I still held on to the magic of movies. When I’d go to the movies it was as if a window opened up to a world I had never dreamed of and I walked right in. If it was a western, I wasn’t just watching John Wayne on the screen—I was the cow-boy, I was the man on the horse. And when I went to a baseball game, I was the one hitting homeruns.”
• “And so, my designs came out of things that people really do and dream about and think about. I am constantly drawing inspiration from the places I travel, the people I meet, the movies I see, the heroes I admire. Growing up, I was inspired by Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, Mickey Mantle, FDR, and JFK. I still am.”
• “Personal style is about having a sense of yourself and of what you believe in, which is basically self-confidence. When you have that confidence you can wear whatever you want and project something personal about who you are and how you feel. Dressing, then, can be an adventure. You dress for the role you’re playing on a particular day. I have always loved clothes that were designed for a purpose-work clothes, uniforms, and the utility fabrics they were made of. They have an integrity to them. The uniform a solider wears is designed for durability, but it also provides the person wearing it with a heroic platform. When I was growing up officers in uniform were very impressive to me. They were doing a job; they were protecting our country; they were heroes. When you wear an old military jacket there’s some sort of connection to those qualities-to being strong, to being tough, to being a warrior. Aspiration for me wasn’t about money, it was about being somebody, standing for something, being an individual.”
• “I was very influenced by movies; I was very influenced by a world that had a sense of dream.”
• “The clothes that I design and everything I’ve done is about life and how people live and how they want to live and how they dream they’ll live.”
• “I don’t design clothes, I design dreams.”
• “It’s about living the best life you can and enjoying the fullness of the life around you—from what you wear, to the way you live, to the way you love.”
• “My eyes are on my life. They are my private camera. I extend all the experience from my private life into my work, because living is my library.”
• “I always wanted to make movies, but I’m just doing them in a different way, creating the dreams, the dream lifestyle. My life helps me with my job, and my job helps me with my life.”

I’ll write more about Ralph another time. But I wanted to bang this out as I just finished one of his books and didn’t want to forget it.