THE STORY OF OUR TIME
“Twelve years, 350 pages, 315 photos, 150,000 words…” Alan Flusser describes his latest book, an illustrated biography of Ralph Lauren, as “the most difficult and challenging project I’ve ever undertaken”. And yet he makes it pretty clear that it was also the most rewarding: “Perhaps the most salient thing about my creative process, and how this 12-year marathon impacted, was that the more I delved and the more I dug, the more I found. It was amazing to find just how much of [Lauren’s] work passed the ultimate litmus test — that of time.”
From his very first book, , Flusser has been expounding on Lauren and his ability to distil every positive connotation of the word ‘lifestyle’ into apparel. In fact, there has been a strong bond between the two men for some time. “Ralph and I have probably met once or twice a year to chat for the past four decades,” Flusser says. “I’ve also hung out with him to take drives in one of his ridiculously fabulous cars over the years, so I have long had a pretty good idea of who he was and what he was about before I signed on to the biography gig. Ralph always said that I ‘got’ him, and I think that’s right. Anyway, I’m one of the few American designers who never worked for him, so we always had that as something unusual between us.”
