Ralph Lauren

Normally I don’t pay much attention to branding—I narrowly missed the whole “designer jeans” craze in the 1980’s—and because I can sew, I can copy. I was really peeved in high school because I had a pair of tweed knickers and wore them (with argyle socks of course) and was the only one in school who had such a garment and then knickers became popular. That took a lot of the fun out of wearing them. The one brand that has intrigued me since my formative years is Ralph Lauren; however, I was (am?) a horse-crazy Scottish Anglophile with upscale tastes and a great love of vintage fashions before I found the brand (and if I’m going to watch grown men chase a little ball around a field, let them do it on horseback; there’s nothing like a good chukker—or chukka for that matter, comfortable boots even when not on horseback) so I’m not sure if the marketing ploys really work—If I were to design my own clothes, I’d probably be wearing something pretty close to RL anyway. I love tweed with old lace—that IS me—not a Madison Avenue construct of me (the tweed goes well with my hair and the old lace with my skin; I look good in ivory). Also, there is a quality issue—RL clothes tend to be well made and made from natural fibers (I avoid synthetic fibers as they’ll melt into your skin and make the burns much worse if you’re ever in a fire) so that rather than the fantasy they sell appeals to me. I also only buy the Lauren brands at thrift stores—I just found a Black Watch lambswool scarf made in Scotland—what could be better than this? Well it could have been cashmere and made in Scotland, but that’s about it.

One of the hard things about writing about advertising for me is that I have given up on commercial TV (I only watch PBS, and I can't do that any more because my converter box isn't bringing in WILL-TV, Champaign Urbana, and cable thinks I'm in a Peoria market, so it dropped WILL for the Peoria station) and I listen to NPR stations so advertising is kept to a minimum. I hate shopping in malls, unless "antique" is in front of "mall" and I've always been attracted to old things so they don't need to advertise to me. I love perfume ads, but perfume aggravates my allergies (or the allergies of the person next to me), and most of the ads that attract my attention are for things I cannot afford. This could be because I am a baby-boomer and my Mom sometimes teases me that I, and not her and my father, was really the one who grew up during the Depression and war years (really, rationing sounds like a good idea sometimes)