He Never Went To a Polo Match

Lights Low

It’s Sunday night, Monday is about 12 hours away, and on Wednesday, October 14th, Ralph Lauren turns 87. So tonight’s letter is about him, because the man who sold old money to the entire world started with less than most of you reading this right now.

THE BIG IDEA: Never Trim the Tie

In 1967, a 27-year-old tie salesman from the Bronx named his brand Polo, and he had NEVER been to a polo match. His whole business fit in one drawer in the Empire State Building.

Every man in America was wearing a skinny tie, two and a half inches wide. Ralph made his four inches wide, in loud Italian silk, and charged $15, more than double what a normal tie cost.

He gets a meeting with Bloomingdale’s, the hottest store in the country, and the buyer tells him two things: make the ties a quarter inch narrower, and take your name off so we can put ours on. Ralph closed his bag and walked out. Six months later, Bloomingdale’s called him back and gave him a whole rack.

Five years after that, the company was almost bankrupt, and he put his entire $100,000 in savings into it. Today that drawer does $8.1 billion a year, and Forbes puts the man at $15 billion.

Now here’s where it’s about you. Most men shrink themselves to get in the door. If you make $5,000 a month and dress like you make $3,000 so nobody thinks you’re showing off, you’re shrinking. If you keep quiet in a meeting because your idea might be “too much,” you’re shrinking. Every time you trim a quarter inch to be accepted, you’re telling the room exactly what you’re worth, which we both know is less than you ACTUALLY are.

It really is as simple as this: decide your standard, and don’t trim it a quarter inch for anybody.

NOT IN THE VIDEO

The yearbook line. In 1957, at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, Ralph was asked to list his ambition, and he wrote one word: millionaire. He later called it a gag. A kid named Lifshitz, son of a house painter, wrote the goal down before he had any reason to believe it, and then he spent 60 years acting like the man who already had it.

The house he rented to sell a feeling. In 1986 he opened his flagship in the Rhinelander Mansion on Madison Avenue, an 1895 limestone house. He spent more than $14 million on it and signed a 49-year lease at around $1 million a year. He didn’t open a store, he opened a world, and you walked in and wanted to live there.

Your apartment, your car and your desk at work are your Rhinelander. People make up their minds about you the second they walk in.

THE DOSSIER

🎂 Happy birthday, Ralph. He turns 87 on Wednesday. In 2015 he opened the Polo Bar in Manhattan, because at that level you’re not selling clothes anymore, you’re selling the room people want to be seen in.

🚗 The world’s first motor show opens tomorrow. The Paris Motor Show runs Monday, October 12 through Sunday, October 18 at Porte de Versailles, and it has been running since 1898. Old institutions stay powerful for one reason: they keep showing up.

🎬 Watch this week. Netflix’s Animals, with Ben Affleck as a mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped. Watch it for one thing: how a man in power holds his face when everything is falling apart.

🍸 The drink. An Old Fashioned: 2 oz bourbon or rye, a sugar cube or a teaspoon of simple syrup, 2 dashes of Angostura bitters, stir over one big ice cube, orange peel. No shortcuts, no fruit salad.

THE POWER MOVE

Tonight, take 10 minutes and write down 3 places where you’ve been making your tie a quarter inch narrower. It could be a price you keep discounting, a style you toned down, or an opinion you keep to yourself at work. Pick one and stop doing it for 7 days straight, not 3 out of 7.

THE LAST WORD

Ralph Lauren once said he “saw things as they should have been, not as they were.” That’s the whole game. Hit reply and tell me: where have you been trimming your tie? I read every reply.

— Robert

P.S. If you want help building the version of you that doesn’t shrink, I take on a small number of men for private 90-day coaching. It’s by application only.

After Hours · The House of Image, Power & Luxury · Power lives in the grey.