Ralph Lauren first introduced womenswear in 1972, bringing his unique sensibility – Savile Row, Collegiate Chic – to American fashion in a powerful way. In the process, he established new a sartorial language that has become synonymous with the ease of the American lifestyle.

“Ralph Lauren Catwalk,” a new book with texts from renowned fashion critic and author Bridget Foley, features a visual timeline of the designer’s extraordinary womenswear journey through the lens of his runway shows.

This is the 11th book in Thames & Hudson’s Catwalk series and marks the first time an American fashion house serves as the subject.

From the debut 1972 women’s collection to fall 2025, the book showcases Lauren’s play with tripes – masculine-feminine, rugged-refined among them – with as told through more 1,300 original runway photographs.

The sum of it all is an entire world to its own.

As Foley puts it in her introduction, “Today, when most people think of Ralph Lauren, they don’t think first of a wide tie or any other single piece, look, or category of clothes…People think instead of that aspirational world now so familiar, or the aspect of it that most attracts them – American preppy or Santa Fe, or British countryside, or Old Hollywood glamour, or performance sports, of a soupçon of French Riviera. Mostly, they think of the overall aura, at once genteel and highly charged, refined, and intentional.”

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of this world?

Main Image: Naomi Campbell, Fall 1992