Ralph Lauren

Overview

Ralph Lauren is a New York fashion house founded by the designer Ralph Lauren in 1967, when he began selling neckties under his own name. Its fragrances have always been made under license, since the mid-1980s by L’Oréal, and the business began in 1978 with two launches in the same month: Lauren and Polo.

That double launch is usually cited as the first time a fashion designer introduced two fragrances simultaneously. Polo in particular set the pattern for the American designer fragrance, and its name still anchors the brand’s largest fragrance family.

Founding and early history

Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx in 1939. While working for the tie maker Beau Brummell he persuaded the company’s president to let him start his own line, and in 1968 he gave his first full menswear collection the name Polo. Women’s tailored shirts followed in 1971, carrying the polo-player emblem for the first time, and a full women’s collection in 1972.

The fragrances were produced by Warner-Lauren, Ltd., a venture with Warner Communications, and made their debut at Bloomingdale’s in March 1978: Lauren on 12 March and Polo on 26 March. Polo won a FiFi award the following year, and Chaps, named for another Ralph Lauren menswear line, completed the first group of Warner-era fragrances.

House style

The first fragrances were built in the grand manner of the late 1970s. Polo, now often called Polo Green after the color of its bottle to distinguish it from the later Polo flankers, is a dark, dense aromatic composition: pine, herbs and juniper over oakmoss, patchouli and leather, close in structure to a chypre. Lauren was a green floral bouquet with rose, carnation and violet on a powdery woody base.

Later launches followed the lighter taste of the 1990s and 2000s. Polo Sport belonged to the fresh sport style of its decade, Romance reduced the rose to a clean, powdery form, and Polo Red set grapefruit and coffee over redwood (red wood). What unites them is the brand’s habit of naming each fragrance after an image from the clothing, whether polo, safari or romance, so that the scent reads as an extension of the wardrobe.

Key fragrances

Perfumers

Ralph Lauren has never employed an in-house perfumer. Its fragrances are briefed by the licensee and composed at the supply houses, and some early credits, including the perfumer of Lauren, are poorly documented.

The perfumer most closely associated with the brand is Carlos Benaïm, who spent some fifty years at IFF; the company itself names Polo and Polo Blue among his signature works. Harry Frémont of Firmenich, co-author of Calvin Klein’s CK One, is credited with Romance and several later Ralph Lauren fragrances. Dominique Ropion composed Ralph’s Club (2021).

Ownership and business history

Warner Communications did not keep its cosmetics business for long. In 1984 it sold Warner Cosmetics, whose brands were Lauren, Chaps and Polo, to Cosmair, the American licensee of L’Oréal, for a reported $146 million; L’Oréal itself dates its Ralph Lauren license to 1985. Cosmair set up a separate division for the Ralph Lauren fragrances in 1991 and was later absorbed into L’Oréal USA.

Ralph Lauren Corporation, which owns the brand, listed on the New York Stock Exchange on 12 June 1997. Ralph Lauren remains executive chairman and chief creative officer, with day-to-day management in the hands of a separate chief executive.

Present position

The fragrances are part of L’Oréal Luxe, and the catalogue is organized around the Polo family, with Polo itself, Polo Blue and Polo Red each carrying its own flankers, alongside Romance.

Recent launches have leaned on the archive: L’Oréal presented Polo 67 in 2024 as a new fragrance within the Polo franchise, not a relaunch of the original, named for the year of the first ties.

Historical assessment

Ralph Lauren’s importance in perfumery rests largely on 1978. Polo showed that an American designer could launch a serious, uncompromising fragrance and sell it on the strength of a clothing image, and the paired launch with Lauren established the paired debut as standard practice for designer houses.

Its later catalogue is more conventional, a licensed portfolio managed through flankers, but Polo remains one of the best-known green aromatics of its era.

From the Fragrance Archive

Fragrance Help profiles of individual Ralph Lauren fragrances.

Sources