Lauren is the first American fashion house to be featured in the “Catwalk” series.Lauren is the first American fashion house to be featured in the “Catwalk” series.
“Ralph Lauren Catwalk,” which will be published Thursday by Thames & Hudson, marks a milestone as the brand is the first American fashion house to be featured in the “Catwalk” series. The book gives an inside look into one of the industry’s most celebrated American designers.
The “Catwalk” series has historically highlighted the work of designers such as Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Louis Vuitton, Yves Saint Laurent, Miuccia Prada, Vivienne Westwood, Versace, Chloe, Givenchy and Jean Paul Gaultier. Each volume provides an in-depth, illustrated history of a designer’s collection.
At a whopping 632 pages, the “Ralph Lauren Catwalk” book celebrates more than five decades of Lauren’s innovation and influence in women’s design. The book contains 1,300-plus original runway photographs and documents Lauren’s journey, starting with his debut women’s collection in fall 1972 through his fall 2025 women’s collection. It is written by Bridget Foley, fashion journalist and former executive editor of WWD, who personally reviewed many of his collections for WWD throughout her career.
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Looking back on his career, Ralph Lauren was asked which collection felt like the biggest risk and how does he view it now?
“When I work on a collection it’s as if I’m making a movie. I have a story to tell — through the clothes, the heroines, the setting. From my first show in 1972, the runways have always been a way to share each season’s story. I believe to achieve your dreams you have to take risks, but I never thought about my collections as being risky. They were about sharing my dreams — creating the worlds I wanted to be part of,” Ralph Lauren told WWD.
Asked how he’s managed to stay so consistent, Lauren said, “I have always been inspired by things that last. I don’t pursue trends; I value things that endure and get better with each wear. It was never about newness, but timelessness. That is the consistency I hope my designs bring each season.”
In the introduction, Foley writes that many of Lauren’s early clothes would feel right at home today, on the runway or on the street. “The consistency is remarkable,” she writes.
Dan Lecca/Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
“Catwalk” captures Lauren’s cinematic approach to fashion and design evidenced in his runway shows, highlighting the vast range of his highly distinctive aesthetic. It covers all of Lauren’s favorite themes — be it the American West, collegiate prep, Hollywood glamour and international adventure, among others.
The book takes the reader through every single fashion show, from an intimate showing of his fall 1972 collection at 40 West 55th Street, a fall 2019 creation of “Ralph’s Club,” a one-night-only retro nightclub on Wall Street that featured entertainer Janelle Monàe, a huge affair at Khalily Stables on New York’s Long Island for spring 2025, complete with a one-night-only, literal recreation of his Manhattan Polo Bar restaurant for dinner, to an intimate fall 2025 presentation at a downtown New York gallery. Collections such as “Eclectic Spirit,” “Rustic Romance,” “Nomadic Fantasy,” “Mod Mood,” “Intrepid Adventure,” “Ralph and Oprah at Lincoln Center” and “Urban Cowgirls” are dissected.
Among the highlights is the celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary, where Lauren showed at Central Park’s Bethesda Terrace. Among the guests were Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Hillary Clinton, Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway. The casting featured a deep roster of models, from elders to adorable kids, many the children of staffers.
With her fashion editor’s eye, honed at WWD and W, Foley reviews each of the collections and explains what exactly was shown on the runway, what it meant and what repercussions it had, if any; the models; the celebrations, and sprinkles in reviews from WWD, The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, the International Herald Tribune and London’s Evening Standard, among others. Each of the reviews is accompanied by multiple photographs from the runway.
“No other designer, current or historical, has worked such a sweeping vision with equal power and clarity. In Lauren’s cinematic world, his characters lead lives of elegance and adventure,” Foley writes. These people cross generations and archetypes and wear clothes as varied as their lives and interests, she said.
firstVIEW/Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
“Jaunty tweeds and floaty dresses for sipping tea from what looks like grandmother’s china. (It’s not; it’s Ralph Lauren.) Sharp equestrian gear for riding. High-tech performance wear for skiing, running, sailing, golf. A great tuxedo and a great pair of jeans, as occasions demand,” Foley writes. She said Lauren invites the viewer into an “exquisitely rendered realm of refinement and adventure, its promise one of a life lived well from the inside out.”
Foley describes Lauren as quantifiably the most successful designer-founder in the history of American fashion and one of the most successful in the history of the global industry. “His is also the longest-running creative gig in fashion among major-house founders who still control their companies.” She notes that after Giorgio Armani’s death in 2025, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and Yohji Yamamoto come close, having established their houses in 1968 and 1977, respectively.
firstVIEW/Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
Foley points out that Lauren’s family has been endless inspiration, and many of his businesses were based on them, such as how shopping with his wife Ricky inspired his entry into womenswear, while becoming a father spurred the launch of his children’s collections. Lauren’s foray into the home space in 1983 resulted from his and Ricky’s experience as they acquired multiple homes, writes Foley — city apartment, beach house, working ranch. “Along the way, he brought a new sensibility to the home area,” she said.
She explains that Lauren wanted to take full control of his visual narratives by creating the settings in which they unfolded. After launching a store in Beverly Hills and a shop-in-shop in Bloomingdale’s, he went international with a store in a former pharmacy on London’s New Bond Street. “But it was in his home city that he rocked the retail world to its core, with the 1986 opening of his flagship on Madison Avenue in the Rhinelander Mansion, a relic of late 19th-century New York’s architectural flamboyance,” Foley writes.
Foley takes the reader through Lauren’s history from his collections to his freestanding stores, to hospitality, such as the Paris restaurant on Boulevard Saint Germain to the Polo Bar in New York City, followed by others in Milan and Chengdu, as well as Lauren’s network of Ralph’s Coffee Shops. She also writes about problems with cultural appropriation, Lauren’s philanthropy and his eight-year-long preservation process and $13 million donation to preserve “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a famous 1813 version of the flag.
Foley recalls Lauren’s self-titled book that he published in 2007 to mark his company’s 40th anniversary. At the time, he reflected on his personal trajectory. As a child growing up in the Bronx, N.Y., he wrote, “I saw the world through a glass window…the one that looks out on my dreams.”
“That youthful reverie became his adult reality,” Foley writes. Lauren offered up later, “I build a collection out of a dream. This is not a job. This is a joy. This is what I breathe. It’s what I live.”
