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That kind of accumulative technique is becoming a model for other designers and retailers, particularly now that Lauren has opened his superstore, in which he has even greater latitude to display such confections. To a certain extent, the Madison Avenue store competes with Polo outlets in New York metropolitan-area department stores. Some East Coast retailing executives were initially resentful of that. Some had supported Lauren in his earlier days or acquiesced to his extensive demands for floor space and elaborate fixtures in their stores. But the retailers are unlikely to shut down the boutiques in protest, because Lauren is a major attraction in their establishments. Besides, they hope the impact of the deluxe Lauren mansion will help make the Polo label even more prestigious. Says Marvin Traub, chairman of Bloomingdale's: "In the long run it will build up the Lauren business. The impact on us is very healthy."
The Madison Avenue store, on which Lauren has lavished more than $14 million, is his ultimate showcase and testing laboratory. In many ways the store rewrites the textbook for upscale retailing. Built in 1895 as the home of a wealthy heiress, the five-story limestone structure had been divided into three separate shops until Lauren managed to get a 49-year lease that covered the entire edifice. Estimated annual rent: $1 million. Now fitted with hand- carved mahogany woodwork and custom-forged brass trim, and dappled with expansive Oriental rugs and sprays of orchids, the store evokes the imagined atmosphere of a London men's club or a distinguished Edwardian hotel. The display space is cluttered with props, including English saddles, bulbous trophies, top hats and a rack of billiard cues. "Lauren is the only designer with the product range to have such a store," says Nina Hyde, fashion editor of the Washington Post. Some shoppers, though, view the store's atmosphere as contrived.
Lauren has flourished in Europe, which is tough turf for an American designer. Calvin Klein, for one, opened a retailing outlet in Milan in 1982 but closed it soon afterward in response to slow sales. By contrast, in its * first four months of operation, Lauren's Paris store on the corner of the Rue Royale and Place de la Madeleine has stimulated the French taste for the preppie look. The New Bond Street shop in London, which met lukewarm response when it opened in 1981, now plans to triple its floor space. Prince Charles and Princess Diana, who wear only British-made clothes for public events, have been seen wearing Lauren's label on more discreet occasions. The British have not failed to notice the irony of Lauren's selling back to them a bit of borrowed cultural inspiration, and at a royal ransom.
The designer's global profits have brought home a lavish life-style for his family. They divide their time among a sprawling apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park; a house on Montego Bay in Jamaica; a working ranch with 1,500 head of cattle near Telluride, Colo.; and an oceanfront house at the tip of Long Island. The family commutes over the long hauls in a nine- passenger Hawker Siddeley jet and covers shorter distances in chartered helicopters. Lauren can be seen gliding through Manhattan in a limousine with the initials RL on the door, but he prefers to pilot his chromeless 1979 Porsche Turbo Carrera, which is custom-finished entirely in black.