The man pictured below name is Ralph Lauren, he is the founder of Polo and The Ralph Lauren clothing brand. He started his business in his hometown of NYC in 1967. He sold his custom ties to small boutique clothing stores throughout the city and after several years he was able to branch out into shirts and other clothing items. I am sure youre asking yourself, Fool, we know who Ralph Lauren is, but what the hell is he doing on your page? Let me explain, I was a HUGE polo fan, along with every other brother in high school, you were not considered fly unless you had at least a couple of polo shirts. The question is why was I such a POLO fan? It didnt dawn on me why I or any of the other young brothers were so crazy about Polo until decades later. I left Detroit in January of 1977 and by the fall of 78 I was entering the eight grade. In the eight grade no one was really checking for what labels you were wearing, we were all laying our OJays inspired mack on the young ladies. In the ninth grade the atmosphere for name brand clothing had done a 180 degree turn, and at that time there were some cats who had migrated from NYC to our little sleepy chocolate town of Dayton, Ohio. If you know anything about New Yorkers, you know that they believe that the sun rises and sets in the Big Apple. The thing about these NYC brothers is that they were wearing some dope ass colorful shirts and some pressed ass Levis denims. They would entertain the ladies with stories about running the streets in NYC, stories about fast living and hustling everything that wasnt nailed down, being from Detroit it was just a flashier version of a million guys I knew up north. I maintained my Polo addiction well into my mid thirties, I mean I had at least a dozen of the shirts, all kinds of colors, the only thing that changed was that I convinced myself that short sleeves were for sissies and promised myself that I would only do long sleeves from that point forward. As the years went by my Polo shirt collection grew as did Mr Laurens wealth and the last I heard he was worth some seven billion dollars, thats a hell of a lot of shirts sold. While talking to some older heads I discovered the missing link regarding my affection for Polo shirts. This older brother told me the origins of Polo and the black man. He told me how when he was younger he belonged to a crew called the Lo-Lifes out of Brooklyn. He said that there whole thing was getting that money by any means necessary, but he informed me that the unique thing about the Lo-lifes was that they were outfitted in Ralph Lauren polo shirts and that was their calling card. He said that everyone in the crew had dozens if not hundreds of Ralph Lauren polo shirts. I naively asked this old head how they copped thousands of polos for a crew that was several hundred deep, I believe his exact words were Cmon son, we bumrushed em. He told me that a hundred young cats would just bumrush Macys or Bloomingdales and just grab ALL the Ralph Lauren gear and just bounce to the subways or the alleys in the city. That got me to thinking, imagine thousands of young brothers in NYC wearing fresh polo gear on the daily, day in and day out, its natural for all the younger cats to emulate their style and subconsciously attach themselves to the Polo brand. Its also natural for some of these youngins to migrate to other cities with that same style, along with fifty polo shirts, just as they had in my town. The young brothers of the Lo-Life clan had provided Mr Lauren with publicity and brand recognition that no amount of money could have purchased. They pushed his brand into a completely different demographic, the brothers of Lo-Life made it cool to wear Polo. I still to this day see young cats sporting Ralph Lauren polo shirts, Im certain that they have no clue as to who the originators of Polo Cool are. The point of this posting is to illustrate how we as black men and women have been building in our communities for decades, how we have created billions of dollars of wealth spending our hard earned money on brands THAT DONT BELONG TO US..WILL THE NEXT BLACK CLOTHING TYCOON PLEASE STAND UP.. Read-Friend-Share
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 02:59:57 +0000
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