The flagship of the Polo/Ralph Lauren retail enterprise was the refurbished Rhinelander mansion on Madison Avenue in New York City. Opened in 1986, the 20,000-square-foot mansion featured mahogany woodwork, hand-carved balustrades lining marble staircases, and sumptuous carpeting. “While men who look like lawyers search for your size shirt and ladies who belong at deb parties suggest complementary bags and shoes, you experience the ultimate in lifestyle advertising,” wrote Lenore Skenazy inAdvertising Age. Naomi Leff, who designed the interior of the Polo palace, called it “a marker in retailing history. It tells manufacturers that if they’re willing to put out, they’ll be able to make their own statement, which is not being made in the department stores.”
Establishing brand-focused retail outlets made perfect sense for Polo/Ralph Lauren, for it allowed the company to increase profits by eliminating the middleman as well as to control the environment in which the products appeared. In fact, other designers have since followed Polo/Ralph Lauren’s lead, including Calvin Klein, Liz Claiborne, Adrienne Vittadini, and Anne Klein. But the move caused tension between the designer and his traditional retailers, the large department stores. A Forbes feature on Lauren’s strategy claimed that “a lot of people in business think it is in bad taste to compete with your own customers. Lauren clearly does not agree. And such is his pull at the cash register that he may get away with this piece of business heresy.”