Star Struck Style

October 14 is Ralph Lauren’s birthday.

In both of my books, I discuss Ralph Lauren at length as an ideal representative of the Taurus aesthetic. I’ve known that he was a Libra for as long as I’ve been writing about fashion astrology, but I’ve never looked at his chart before.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see that he has the moon, Mercury and Venus in Scorpio, Mars in Aquarius, and both Jupiter and Saturn in Aries. None of those placements reveal a guy who has made Americana his shtick. In fact, if I was to consider those planetary placements without knowing to whom they belonged, I would guess that this chart belonged to someone like Calvin Klein — the other crown prince of American fashion. Klein used media in an innovative fashion (Mars in Aquarius), pushed rebellion and androgyny in his advertising campaigns (the Aries placements), and sold sex, sex, sex (the three planets in Scorpio).

I don’t have a birth time for Ralph Lauren. Putting the planets into the houses would probably explain his chart to me. Or maybe he’s been lying about his age for his entire career — that could explain a lot, too. Now I sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist. Maybe Ralph’s Americana is rubbing off on me; those Yanks love their conspiracy theories!

I’ve discussed a lot of designers on this blog whose creative output doesn’t really align with my grand theories about astrology and its relation to fashion, but rarely find myself grasping at straws to discuss a chart once I really get into it. In the case of Ralph Lauren, I am at a loss to explain what makes him the designer he has been for more than fifty years. This chart makes no sense to me.