Port’s editor-in-chief, Dan Crowe, on a true fashion icon and the cover star of our summer issue
We wanted to have a fashion icon on the cover of Port, in the same way that we have featured truly extraordinary actors, editors, chefs, film directors and even dancers. I hadn’t seen Ralph Lauren on a cover for several years. There have been stock images used for covers, but not a styled, new shoot. This piqued my interest.
Ralph Lauren’s story is the apotheosis of the American dream: ambition and self-invention, but also of a certain reverence for old-world elegance and authenticity. For our world exclusive profile and cover shoot of the man who built one of fashion’s great empires, we sent our European editor, Donald Morrison, to Lauren’s New York headquarters, for a frank and revealing interview. “I like English things, cowboy things, pretty things,” said Lauren on a tour of his private office, teeming with artifacts from a half-century career, as well as photos of famous friends and heroes: Princess Diana, Cary Grant, Fred Astaire, and a man whom Morrison did not recognize. “That’s Clemente,” Lauren explained to Don. “My barber for the past 43 years. I moved him into the building.” Lauren, the Bronx-born former tie salesman who dresses – and dines with – heads of state and Hollywood stars, has not forgotten his roots.
