By Phil WahbaSenior WriterPhil Wahba is a senior writer at Fortune primarily focused on leadership coverage, with a prior focus on retail.
This April, designer Ralph Lauren commandeered Manhattan’s sumptuous Clock Tower Building for his eponymous company’s fall 2025 fashion show—and proceeded to pack the place with boldface names and influencers young and old, all curious to see what the brand had come up with.
On a pass through the room, maneuvering around the building’s marble Corinthian columns and grandiose staircase, you could spot Anna Wintour of Vogue, not far from actor Anne Hathaway (in a beige trench coat) and country star Kacey Musgraves (in a white tank top and cowboy hat). Nearby, Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Seinfeld and Veep fame was hanging out with Lauren’s wife, Ricky.
The show, “The Modern Romantics,” unveiled a collection of women’s wear—an area where the company is avidly boosting its presence. Models sported aviator jackets, cashmere wraps, and boots in styles that blended masculine and feminine, mixing hard materials like leather (lots of it) with soft ones like lace. The fashion press would later declare the event a home run. And once all 47 models had walked the runway, the 85-year-old Ralph Lauren himself appeared to rapturous applause on the mezzanine, taking it all in.
Watching the designer from. below, beaming deferentially, was a dapper, bespectacled man sporting a natty pocket square: Patrice Louvet, Ralph Lauren’s CEO. Though he’s hardly tabloid famous, the fashionistas in attendance knew him well; he was deep in conversation with Wintour for part of the evening. And if Ralph Lauren the company is firing on all cylinders financially and culturally these days, it’s in large part thanks to Louvet, whose business acumen has complemented Ralph Lauren the man’s nearly infallible instincts.
Louvet, CEO since 2017, came from Procter & Gamble, a world of toothpaste and razor blades, but he has arguably saved the most important American fashion company from the threat of obsolescence. In the years before his arrival, Ralph Lauren—long a barometer for the financial health and cred of U.S. fashion—had seen declining sales and profits, and more worryingly, declining brand equity. In its quest for growth and a wider customer base, it had become a fixture at discount chains like J.C. Penney, Kohl’s, and T.J. Maxx—retailers that don’t exactly scream “timeless luxury.” And Ralph Lauren’s welter of overlapping sub-brands was confusing its customers.
“There are a number of levers you can pull to continue fast growth that you can convince yourself are not problematic,” Louvet tells Fortune, describing that spiral at company headquarters in Manhattan on a hot day in early summer. He’s dressed in an immaculate navy blue suit from Purple Label, the company’s luxury men’s wear line. “You say we will do a little bit more, it’ll be fine, then yet more the next quarter, and you keep dialing it up,” he continued. Until one day, like a frog that’s been boiled gradually, your brand equity dies.
For Louvet, the solution for a company with decades of history was to return to what made it coveted in the first place. “Ralph founded this company as a luxury company, and what we needed to do was go back to this mindset,” says Louvet, who’s 61.
Under Louvet, Ralph Lauren exited more than 1,000 U.S. department stores, reducing the brand’s very high exposure to that declining retail format. It has built more stand-alone stores and focused its product assortment on pricier items around which it can sustain its understated-but-upscale fashion narrative.
Over eight years, Louvet has refashioned a company whose top line, $7.1 billion in the most recent fiscal year, is on a steady upward course, and whose profits and operating margins are at 13-year highs. Average unit retail, a metric that serves as a composite of the prices a company charges for all its products, has doubled. (It helps to be selling calfskin shoulder bags for $2,200. Suits like the one Louvet wore to our interview retail for a tidy $2,995.) Not everything is extravagantly priced—a perennial hit is the $398 U.S. flag cotton Polo sweater—but fewer items are discounted every year.
The luxury halo appears to have returned—just in time for a period when more people are dressing up again after years of wearing athleisure everywhere. “Ralph Lauren has always been synonymous with quality, and that really resonates with consumers today,” says TD Cowen analyst John Kernan. Savvy marketing has helped the 58-year-old company become a hit with Gen Z shoppers and influencers, a promising sign for the long term. One big recent coup: In the social media posts where Taylor Swift announced her engagement to football star Travis Kelce, both were wearing Ralph Lauren.
Louvet is quick to share credit, not least with the man whose name is on the door of every store and on every product. As executive chairman and chief creative officer, Ralph Lauren still plays a central role in how the company operates. Even more so than most CEOs, leaders who work with founders need emotional intelligence, and Louvet, by all accounts, has plenty; he knows how to lead without being the star of the show.
“Ralph founded this company as a luxury company. What we needed to do was go back to this mindset.”
Patrice Louvet on Ralph Lauren’s Revival
David Lauren, chief branding and innovation officer and the only one of Lauren’s three children to become a company executive, is among Louvet’s fans. “When you find someone who also brings a unique humility, kindness, self-awareness, and maturity,” he says, “it’s an amazing combination.
Ralph Lauren, born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx in 1939, has been famous for longer than most American shoppers have been alive. Though he never went to fashion school, doesn’t do his own sketches, and has no training in how to cut fabrics, he’s always had a sharp eye and no shortage of chutzpah. Lauren first won attention in 1967, with neckties that were wider than was fashionable at the time. When Bloomingdale’s told him it would buy his ties only if he narrowed them and replaced their Polo tags with Bloomingdale’s labels, he said no; a few months later, Bloomingdale’s relented.
Lauren has always said he wanted to see the clothes he saw in the movies in stores. And selling that fantasy—whether the WASP aesthetic of a Connecticut estate, or the preppy panache of upscale college kids, or the cowboy feel of his own Colorado ranch—has remained at the heart of his aesthetic vision. As filmmaker Ken Burns said in the 2019 documentary Very Ralph, “You’re not just buying an article of clothing, you’ve joined a narrative.”
Even so, says fashion historian Emma McClendon, Ralph Lauren has never tried to be cutting-edge. “What they’re attempting to be is the standard-bearer of American style,” she says. Being “timeless,” a word company executives use ad nauseam, is perhaps the cornerstone of its identity. By the 1980s and ’90s, Ralph Lauren’s suits became the uniform for many men on Wall Street, and Lauren has dressed first ladies from Nancy Reagan to Melania Trump, along with countless celebrities.
But over the decades, the company’s hyper-speed rise sowed the seeds of an existential crisis. Much of its growth was fueled by licensing deals. By 2000, some 26 outside companies were making and advertising the wares Lauren designed, limiting the company’s control over everything from quality to distribution to brand equity. And the company faced enormous pressure to keep the pace going after it went public in 1997.
Management delivered: Between 2007 and 2015, Ralph Lauren revenue rose 80%, to a peak of $7.6 billion. But the quest led the company down some ill-advised roads. By the late 2000s, convinced it could retain credibility while selling lower-end brands at discount chains, Ralph Lauren was everywhere from Saks Fifth Avenue to J.C. Penney. Trying to be all things to all people “is often the beginning of the end for luxury brands,” says Silvia Bellezza, a former LVMH executive who teaches marketing at Columbia Business School.
Ralph Lauren also took risks in its manufacturing, overproducing for fear of leaving revenue on the table—which in turn led to mass discounting of unsold goods. It was unclear what this company was anymore: one that competed in luxury with the likes of Brioni, or one that sold socks at $10 for a four-pack at T.J. Maxx.
As business began to erode, the Lauren family had one vital advantage: They held the vast majority of voting shares (85% currently). That control shielded Ralph Lauren from the drastic decisions that could have been imposed by an activist investor, and it gave the family the room it needed to fix the company.
In 2015, Lauren announced he was stepping down as CEO (but staying on as chief creative officer). He handed the reins to Stefan Larsson, who had seen wild success as global president of Old Navy, and whom Lauren encouraged to bring in fresh thinking. Larsson began the difficult process of reform: In 2016, Ralph Lauren laid off 8% of its staff, eliminating 1,200 jobs. It also began closing stores, including its new Polo store on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue—a move that fomented a sense the company was in crisis.
But for a founder with such a strong point of view, ceding any measure of control proved to be difficult. Larsson was gone by May 2017, after only 20 months. Media reports at the time suggested that Lauren and Larsson agreed on where the company should be heading but not on how to get there. (Larsson, who is now CEO of PVH, the parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, says he remains a big fan of the company. “I was honored to play a part in its journey, contributing to that strong foundation and heritage that Ralph and Patrice have so successfully tapped into,” he told Fortune.)
Enter Patrice Louvet. His nearly 29 years at P&G had endowed him with enviable brand-building chops and mastery of the intricacies of global supply chains. He also knew how to run a big team. Ralph Lauren’s workforce had ballooned to 25,000, generating an org chart that was bureaucratic and full of overlap; Louvet patiently simplified it. “The company was hungry for someone who could organize it into a smoothly functioning system,” says David Lauren. “A lot of creativity didn’t have an outlet.”
After the Sturm und Drang preceding his arrival, Louvet’s people skills were just as big of a draw. One of his first moves might seem banal: creating a mission statement that galvanized the troops after the 2016 layoffs. Louvet, who has a multi-hour weekly lunch with Lauren to talk shop and life, marvels at how his boss regularly asks him big existential questions, like “Are you happy?” “No one at P&G ever asked me that. It’s an amazing question,” Louvet says. And he now asks the same question of his own direct reports.
However tight the partnership, Lauren ultimately calls the shots. Louvet’s contract contains a provision stipulating that Lauren has final say on brand and creative decisions, along with hiring and dismissals of top executives in design and marketing. (Larsson’s contract had no such provision.)
Louvet says he and Lauren simply found the areas in which each is best suited to lead: “It’s not written, ‘Patrice, you do this; Ralph, you do that,’ and yet naturally we have fallen into our respective roles.” Lauren himself is quick to hail their collaboration. “This company has never been a one-man show,” he said in a statement. “No one achieves this alone.”
Brand erosion has a way of going slowly at first, then snowballing. That was the situation Louvet inherited at Ralph Lauren. Sales fell $1.3 billion, or 18%, between 2016 and 2018, and profit was plunging. (Sales began to rebound in 2019 but tanked again during the pandemic.)
Some of Louvet’s changes involved making Ralph Lauren smaller to make it stronger. Building on Larsson’s work, he continued to get the brand out of department stores that were not showcasing it well. The company has exited about two-thirds of the North American department stores where it had a presence at its peak. In 2011, Macy’s alone sold $1 billion worth of Ralph Lauren goods, accounting for 22% of the fashion brand’s sales. Now it’s a fraction of that.
All the while, Ralph Lauren expanded its own store base. Its footprint remains relatively small: It has 269 company-operated stores worldwide. But at those stores, it tunes the setting for maximum impact. Lauren’s cinematic sensibilities inspire the look and establish a visual vocabulary that sets a Ralph Lauren blazer apart from a rival’s. The Ralph Lauren flagship, on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, exemplifies this approach. Sturdy wooden desks, leather armchairs, and horse-themed photography suggest an exclusive country club, but one with warmth. It’s a marked contrast to the department store vibe of the 2010s—think piles of unfolded Polo Bear sweaters strewn across tables.
Stand-alone stores also help Ralph Lauren build buzz. The women’s store, across Madison from the flagship, is home to the popular Ralph’s Coffee, which has lines around the block on most days. (It’s the original Ralph’s: There are now 30 worldwide, with more on the way.) The company has placed its luxury handbags right by the coffee shop, the better to entice upscale locals and tourists alike. Louvet hopes Ralph Lauren can become as dominant in handbags as it is in sweaters and polo shirts.
The company also sells antique jewelry and vintage clothing at that store, to add to the treasure-hunt fun so many retailers forsake in pursuit of efficiency. Back at the men’s flagship building, there’s a new, hyper-luxurious suite that the biggest spenders can use for private shopping or private events. Downtown, the popular Double RL store in SoHo sells leather jackets and jeans adored by creative types, albeit those who have a bit more money.
Dotting the world with stores is not in the cards. Louvet says the company will remain focused on its “gateway cities” (it currently has 30 and plans to add 20 over the next three years), while serving others via its website or its wholesale partners. But the elevated presentation at its own stores has allowed it to more clearly differentiate its subbrands. One of Louvet’s early moves was to sell mass-market brand Club Monaco, the better to strengthen the remaining brands’ identities.
“We sometimes get reduced to, ‘You’re the preppy style guys,’” Louvet says. “But actually this brand is multidimensional. You want to be a cowboy in Colorado? Double RL gives you that. And you want to be some dandy on Savile Row? Purple Label can give you that. You want to be a college kid at Boston University? We have rugby shirts.”
That clearer differentiation among brands allows Ralph Lauren to sell some of its Purple Label men’s dress shirts for $800 while selling similar-looking ones under Polo for $138—without confusing, or angering, shoppers.
The company has also gotten much better at marketing to those shoppers and gathering information about them. Ralph Lauren’s marketing budget is about 7.3% of sales, roughly double what it was a few years ago. It’s become more targeted and effective, seeking the young consumer who favors “old money” and classic looks but wants more affordable prices than Hermès or Balenciaga offers.
Ralph Lauren now has much deeper data it can analyze, not just for personalizing ads but to figure out what products would do best under what sub-brand. “We are more precise, more targeted, more intentional,” says chief product and merchandising officer Halide Alagöz. While roughly 70% of Ralph Lauren’s goods are similar year in, year out, that data helps the company reduce the risk of misfires for the other 30%, or simply to know if a new jean jacket might make more sense for RRL or for Polo.
Alagöz insists that the science of merchandising doesn’t choke off the art. New collections continue to reflect designers’ passions: For example, Ralph Lauren recently launched an acclaimed collection, Oak Bluffs, evoking the crisp style at historically Black colleges and in the Black enclave on Martha’s Vineyard. It also collaborated with Major League Baseball to create sweaters, satin jackets, and the like bearing iconic team logos.
Whatever the balance of art and science, the company is winning over young customers. Research firm Kantar’s BrandZ tracker found Ralph Lauren has the fourth-highest brand equity in the luxury apparel category among young people, a marked improvement from just five years ago.
This popularity has come much to Louvet’s relief. He recalls being asked by friends before starting his CEO job whether Ralph Lauren could still be relevant. “It was clear at the time that for the younger generation, the answer was no,” he says. Now, young people are dying for a table at the Polo Bar, a celebrity-packed eatery that is one of the hardest places to land a reservation in Manhattan. The bar features a $110 steak and a $495 martini: Timeless luxury, in food and beverage form.
In 2022, as Ralph Lauren began to recover from the pandemic, it unveiled a three-year growth plan, grandiosely titled “The Next Great Chapter.” Women are central characters in this story: The company is sharply focused on its nearly $2 billion women’s business, which represents only about 30% of apparel sales. Categories like handbags and outerwear are under-tapped, the company believes, as are markets like India and cities other than the gateways. “I am planting the seeds for my successor,” Louvet says.
The positive reviews the women’s show garnered in April demonstrate that Louvet has much to work with. But in fashion, by definition, a brand can never sit on its laurels. “It’s got to stay fresh,” says Louvet. Indeed, his boss demands as much. “As soon as we’re done with a fashion show, [Ralph] celebrates for about 12 seconds, maybe 15, and then he’ll say, ‘What’s the next thing going to be, and how are we going to raise the bar?’”
Doing more with fewer brands
Ralph Lauren’s portfolio includes a dozen or so sub-brands—considerably fewer than a decade ago—and each has a particular target clientele. Here are the biggest, in descending order of fanciness
Ralph Lauren collection (women) and Ralph Lauren Purple Label (men)
The ne plus ultra brands on the roster, where the company competes with luxury heavyweights like Brioni and Hermès. Many items are hand-tailored, and quite a few made in Italy. (A Purple Label cotton-linen denim Western men’s shirt fetches $995, while a large calfskin tote goes for $4,400.)
Double RL
A reference to the initials Ralph Lauren and his wife, Ricky, share, Double RL is a high-end line inspired by vintage work wear and American West iconography. A comparable T-shirt that costs $50 at Polo costs about $80 at RRL. Mostly focused on men’s wear since its 1993 founding, Double RL is now going after the women’s market.
Polo Ralph Lauren
The company’s flagship brand. While far less expensive than Collection or Purple Label, Polo, with its immediately recognizable, ubiquitous polo player logo, is not exactly cheap, with some sweaters going for $400. The brand focuses on preppy looks that evoke an active lifestyle.
RLX
This brand is focused on more technical sports apparel, offering a range of moisture-wicking Polo shirts and outdoor gear such as pullovers and windbreakers. There is an emphasis on golf apparel.
Lauren Ralph Lauren
This women’s line caters to what Ralph Lauren calls “aspirational” luxury seekers, with lower prices than the company’s other brands.
This article appears in the October/November 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “Restoring the aura of Ralph Lauren.”