Ghetto to Glamour
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from GHETTO to GLAMOUR how american jews toppled paris couture and redesigned the fashion industry Johanna Neuman alph Rueben Lifshitz’s father was a housepainter who longed to be an artist. RHis mother, green-eyed Frieda Lifshitz, insisted that Ralph and her other three children attend yeshiva in the hope that they would bring her “Jewish nachas.” But Ralph, born in 1939 in the Bronx, had other ideas. While other kids in the fifties were wearing motorcycle jackets, he saved money from after-school jobs to buy oxford shirts, crew neck sweaters and white high-top sneakers. When he couldn’t find clothes to match his instincts, he designed his own. Encouraged by his father, who appreciated his sense of color and texture, Lifshitz, by then Ralph Lauren, founded his own company in 1968, choosing the name Polo to evoke the power and style of the upper-class sport. From the start, his clothes reflected the gentrified sensibility of polo matches, yacht clubs and family crests. He became the breakout design star of the post-war era, a pioneer who understood the global hunger for assimilation. Today, Lauren is ubiquitous in fashion, head of a powerful global empire that designs all of its products—from sportswear to fragrances to home furnishings C and even paint—with an aura of casual American comfort and upper-crust British OURTESY OF POLO R class. In keeping with the Polo image, Lauren has perfected his persona as a charter member of the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant establishment. He’s a car enthusiast who maintains a world-class collection of rare automobiles, andby a patriotJohanna who Neuman helped A the Smithsonian Institution restore the flag that inspiredThe Star-Spangled Banner. LPH L A UREN ART CREDIT 34 july/august 2009 july/august 2009 / MoMent 35 labor for garment factories in New three dollars, Davis began making a pair Their business grew into the world’s and the advertising. Corporate America York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore of trousers in 10-ounce duck twill that largest shirt company, the Phillips- still maintained a strong glass ceiling— and elsewhere. “Based in urban he had purchased from Levi Strauss’ Van Heusen Corp., which by 1921 had so-called gentlemen’s agreements barred centers and pushed by history toward dry goods store in San Francisco. As he introduced the self-folding collar and entry into fields like medicine and the entrepreneurship, Jews found fashion one was stitching them up, he noticed some begun trading publicly on the New York law—but in the schmatte business, the of the fields open to them,” says Valerie copper rivets nearby, the kind he used to Stock Exchange. In 1929, the company only ceiling was creativity and sweat Steele, a historian at the Fashion Institute attach straps to horse blankets for cattle cemented its appeal by introducing equity, savvy and timing. Jews, says of Technology in New York. drivers. “So when the pants were done,” shirts with attached collars—looser, Alana Newhouse, “used their knowledge It was one of those paradigm-shifting he later recalled, “the rivets were lying more comfortable and easier to wash in of the garment industry to pole vault moments in history. As author Malcolm on the tables—and the thought struck new electric washing machines. themselves into high fashion.” Gladwell writes in Outliers: The Story me to fasten the pockets with rivets.” From the beginning, the connective of Success, the Jewish immigrants had The quintessential American garment, tissue of Jewish history in the rag trade he 1930s designer Adrian was born the skills to match the times: “To come blue jeans, was born. The pants were an was family. “This business, the fashion Tto immigrants in Connecticut. to New York City in the 1890s with a immediate hit—Davis sold 200 pairs in industry, is truly a family business,” said Although Adrian Adolph Greenberg background in dressmaking or sewing or the next 18 months—and soon imitators Andrew Rosen, founder of the Theory knew no one in the garment business, he schwittwaren handlung (piece goods) was began copying his design. His wife fashion label and now CEO of Helmut was armed with talent: While studying a stroke of extraordinary good fortune. objected to a patent, arguing that he in Paris, his designs caught the eye of It was like showing up in Silicon Valley had already paid good money for two Rudolph Valentino’s wife, and he began in 1986 with ten thousand hours of successful patent applications that had “TO COME TO NEW designing for the actor. It was only a matter computer programming already under made them no richer. So Davis wrote YORK CITY IN THE 1890S of time before he left for Hollywood, your belt.” to his supplier, Strauss, asking him to becoming its first major costume WITH A BACKGROUND IN Jewish immigrants had another become a partner. Strauss agreed, and designer and helping Hollywood moguls, advantage—a talent for reinventing the firm gave the famous “501” lot DRESSMAKING WAS A STROKE many of them Jewish, define glamour. As themselves and a sensitivity to image. number to the pants with the rivets. The OF EXTRAORDINARY GOOD chief designer at MGM, Adrian set new Centuries of wandering had bred a rest is history. standards in movie creativity by dressing FORTUNE IT WAS LIKE unique antenna for the cultural zeitgeist The Davis-Levi Strauss partnership . the characters in the 1939 The Wizard of gentile society. That inheritance (Davis sold his share in 1907) was one SHOWING UP IN SILICON of Oz. (We have him to thank for film’s translated into a keen understanding of the first major Jewish footholds in the signature red-sequined ruby slippers.) VALLEY IN 1986 WITH 10,000 of what would sell. In a country where American garment industry. Although Macy’s copied one of Adrian’s designs for image was king, Jews created looks that New York was its epicenter, Jews owned HOURS OF COMPUTER Joan Crawford—worn in a 1932 movie spoke not to their ethnic backgrounds dry goods stores throughout the country PROGRAMMING UNDER called Letty Lynton—and sold a half but to their instincts about how that were well positioned for entrepre- million dresses. His designs in the 1939 YOUR BELT .” Americans saw themselves—and of how neurial expansion. During the Civil War, film The Women were so breathtaking Former yeshiva student Ralph Lauren became the breakout design star of the post-war era. the world would see America. the Fechheimer brothers of Cincinna- that while the movie was shot in black ti—whose father and grandfather were —MALCOLM GLADWELL and white, the studio used Technicolor Ralph Lauren’s parents had come In Europe, only a few professions acob Youphes came to America from peddlers in Germany—won a contract for a 10-minute fashion parade featuring from Belarus, and his success can be were open to Jews. Largely barred JLatvia in 1854 with grand ambitions. to supply standard size uniforms to the his work. in part attributed to his immigrant from owning land, they were forced to Changing his name to Jacob W. Davis, Union Army. The company, now owned Lang, a big New York clothing company. While Adrian was designing for Greta upbringing. “By virtue of his status as an earn their living as tailors or traders, he traveled the country, investing in by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, Rosen’s grandfather Arthur founded Garbo and Norma Shearer, a few Jewish outsider, he was able to look at WASP honing skills that would serve them breweries, coal, tobacco and pork, even is still making uniforms for police offi- Puritan Fashions in 1910, his father designers in New York were gaining culture and see and create the fantasy of well in the New World. They arrived panning for gold. But as he approached cers, firefighters, postal workers and even Carl was a leading Seventh Avenue national attention. Austrian Henrietta it,” says Alana Newhouse, editor of Tablet in 19th-century America just as a new 40, with a wife and six children to baseball umpires. executive. “It’s about relationships, Kanangeiser renamed herself Hattie Magazine. Like other Jewish designers, technology—the sewing machine—was support, Davis resigned himself to the Each wave of Jewish immigration about community, about threading one Carnegie (after the nation’s most famous including Calvin Klein, Donna Karan revolutionizing the apparel business. As Old World life of a Jewish tailor. brought success stories. One of the most generation to the next,” he says. industrialist, Andrew Carnegie), and UREN designed colorful dresses and artful jewelry A and Isaac Mizrahi, he owes something to Americans moved from the farm to the He was in his shop on Virginia Street dramatic is that of Rabbi Moses Phillips As the industry grew, so did the LPH L the generations of Jews who made and city and began buying from the Sears & in Reno one December day in 1870 and his wife Endel, who emigrated from extended family. Soon Jews were for Crawford and Tallulah Bankhead and A peddled clothes throughout Europe, Roebuck catalogue or the general store, when a woman ordered a pair of work Poland. In 1881, with eight children to involved in nearly every aspect of public figures like Clare Boothe Luce and most of whom never saw an English a new industry of ready-made clothes pants for her husband, a large man feed, they began sewing shirts by hand clothing—from the supply end to the the Duchess of Windsor. country estate, stepped foot on a yacht began to take shape. Jewish immigrants who kept wearing out the pockets and and selling them from pushcarts to retail world, from the sweatshops and Sally Milgrim designed the light OURTESY OF POLO R C or heard of polo.