RALPH LAUREN 50TH ANNIVERSARY LIMITED AND NUMBERED EDITION HERITAGE TIE SET FOR THE RAKE

We all fantasise about inventing a time machine that would allow us to reach through the miasma of decades past, march into a Ferrari dealership in 1963 and lay down a deposit on one of the 39 Ferrari 250 GTOs ever made. Or back to Arles in 1889 to seek out the genius iconoclast Vincent van Gogh and purchase from him the work of totemic majesty that is Starry Night. But personally I’ve always wanted to return to 1967, two years before I was born, when a 28-year-old Ralph Lauren had the seminal inspiration that created the single most unique, enduring, original and visionary ready-towear empire and the first true American luxury brand.

Over the next 50 years he would evolve, hone and refine an art form as singular as Hemingway’s literature or Jackson Pollock’s abstract expressionism. He would distil the best parts of America — its ethics, its optimism, its easy casual cool — into a new language written through clothing, and transport this unique vision