Three ways the all-American designer changed the way we dress.

The year 1967 was a big one for the US. The 25th amendment was ratified. Mr Jimi Hendrix released his debut album. And the Boston Red Sox reached the World Series for the first time in more than two decades. It was also the year that Mr Ralph Lauren founded a company that would come to shape American fashion for the next 50 years. The Red Sox’s magnificent run came to be known as “The Impossible Dream”, but Mr Lauren is said to be the living embodiment of the American Dream. Indeed, he’s made it his business: “I have always been inspired by the dream of America,” he says. “[It] became the living part of all that I design.” What started as a humble tie-selling operation has grown over the past half-century into a multi-billion-dollar empire encompassing 17 individual brands, each with its own personality, but all true to Mr Lauren’s vision of the country he calls home.

To celebrate the anniversary, we’ve teamed up with three of these brands – Polo Ralph Lauren, RRL and Purple Label – to release an exclusive capsule collection. It’s available to shop on MR PORTER from today and we’ve taken the liberty of picking out some of our favourite pieces that we wager will look just as good in 50 years’ time.

If there was one piece you could hold up as a shining beacon of what Ralph Lauren Purple Label was all about, it would be this tuxedo jacket. For starters, well, it’s purple. But, more importantly, it holds true to the brand’s underlying mission statement – a collection of classics that’ll never go out of style. And what could be more classic than an item of clothing that’s barely changed for a century or so. Sure, it wasn’t always purple, but that brings us to another thing Mr Lauren is really good at: reinvention.

While Mr Ralph Lauren didn’t invent the polo, he’s certainly responsible for reinventing it. The designer got the idea from the Ivy League varsity tradition: “The age of the gentleman athlete – the tennis player, the polo player, the rowers and scullers,” he says. But Mr Lauren took it further: he redefined the sportswear staple as a casualwear one. Which is why you can pretty much wear a polo shirt anywhere these days – it looks equally appropriate under a blazer at work as it does with shorts in summer. And you’re spoilt for choice since, as far back as 1972, they’ve come in every conceivable colour of the rainbow.

“The cowboy lives a certain kind of life. He’s tough and there’s a certain look to the clothes he wears,” says Mr Lauren. “The boots, the jeans, the jacket, the work shirt, the Western shirt, the weathered hat, are elements of his life and work. They grew out of an old tradition. They’re part of the land.” And that is what RRL, a line named for and inspired by the designer’s ranch in Colorado, trades in. These are clothes that recall the romance of the Wild West and are, like this hard-wearing flannel overshirt, very much up to the reality of it, too.