Style How Ralph Lauren Sold the American Dream to the World
In 1955, a sixteen-year-old boy from a working-class family in the Bronx decided to change his last name, and he didn't pick a neutral one. Ralph Lifshitz became Ralph Lauren - a name that sounded like it belonged to someone who had always owned a riding club, not to a boy whose father painted houses for a living and whose mother insisted the family keep strictly kosher.
