American public latched on to his lifestyle vision, even if highbrow establishment didn’t

Every designer sells clothes. Ralph Lauren sells dreams. People don’t just buy his trimly tailored tweed jackets. They buy into the idea of joining the gentry. A lovingly detailed prairie skirt doesn’t just promise casual feminine style. It promotes a fantasy of cowgirl adventure.

Other designers create lines. Lauren, however, creates lives – or at least the trappings of those lives.

It’s an aspirational universe celebrated in “Ralph Lauren: In His Own Fashion.” And, as lovingly assembled by fellow designer Alan Flusser, the oversize, photo-crammed book is also the story of a man whose greatest creation may have been himself.

Born in 1939 in the Bronx as Ralph Lifshitz, Lauren was the fourth child of Frank and Frieda. Frank, an aspiring artist, turned to house painting to support his family. Frieda kept their two-bedroom apartment on Steuben Ave. spotless and pushed the children to study hard.

Ralph had other interests. He loved sports and made the basketball team at the Talmudical Academy – an honor he lost when he transferred to the larger and more competitive DeWitt Clinton High. He loved the movies, too, spending hours at the palace of theaters on the Grand Concourse, Loew’s Paradise.

Mostly, though, like other teens in the ’50s, he just hung out. In the Mosholu Parkway neighborhood, that happened at “The Rail,” a small fenced area opposite Public School 80.

“That was your social life,” recalled the late Garry Marshall, another local boy made good. “Our neighborhood was unique in that elsewhere what mattered was how well you played ball and how tough you were. Here, you could be funny or dress up and nobody would call you a sissy. We respected humor as well as looking cool and going with girls.”

Lauren liked dressing up. His style idols were Fred Astaire and Gary Cooper, but their formal elegance was hard to pull off as a Bronx teenager. Instead, he went for the preppie look, sporting white tennis sweaters, and penny loafers. Under “Ambition” in his high school yearbook, he wrote “Millionaire.”

The first step in that plan was going to Baruch for a business degree. The second was following his older brother Jerome’s lead and changing his last name to Lauren, finally ending a lifetime of vulgar playground jokes.

He was a young man in a hurry, and quit college after two years. After a brief gig selling clothes at Brooks Brothers, Lauren landed a job as a salesman for a glove company. From there, he moved on to pushing ties.

He wasn’t the first boy from the Bronx to go into the rag trade. Except, in Lauren’s eyes, he wasn’t in the garment industry. He was in fashion.

He dressed the part, too, with an eclectic wardrobe that ranged from expensive suits to leather bomber jackets. Trade papers like the Daily News Record began writing about the eager young tie salesman with the million-dollar style.

Of course, it’s easy to spend all your money on clothes when you still live with your parents.

But Lauren soon got bored selling other people’s ties, especially when they all seemed to be the same, sad, narrow strips of cloth. He pushed his bosses to let him start choosing the colors and patterns. When they balked at most of his ideas, he went out on his own.

It was a significant risk. Lauren had recently gotten married, and money was tight. His entire inaugural collection could fit in a single desk drawer. But it was 1968, and Lauren saw something his staid employers didn’t: American men were ready to get groovy.

Lauren nearly doubled the average width of a tie, from 2 inches to 31⁄2, and used lush fabrics usually reserved for draperies and upholstery. He also favored wilder patterns, like tapestry and windowpane checks. He took the top price from $5 to $7.50.

The menswear establishment mocked his innovations, comparing his neckwear to napkins. But men liked them, and they remembered the brand name: Polo.

It was a distinctive look. Yet for Lauren, it was all about the feel.

“I’m promoting a level of taste,” he told a fashion reporter. “I don’t care how wide the lapels or the neckties are. All I want is the old money look. I want to stand for the same kind of thing Abercrombie & Fitch and Brooks Brothers used to, and should have gone on to.”

Of course, once the broader