The billionaire American has purchased the rights to a series of police mugshots of Kelly and other Sydney thugs, conmen and criminals to adorn his flagship stores in New York and London and help inspire a new advertising campaign.
The arresting black-and-white portraits of Harbour City low-lifes have been published in two books by the crime novelist Peter Doyle.
Lauren's company came across the books and photographs online and contacted the Historic Houses Trust, which manages the NSW forensic photography archive, in August this year.
Negotiations with Foster Witt, the director of art acquisitions at Polo Ralph Lauren in New York, led to the sale of 10 prints to adorn the Ralph Lauren New York flagship store and another 11 for the London store.
''They had seen Peter Doyle's City of Shadows and Crooks Like Us books and they went onto our website,'' said Alice Livingstone, rights and permissions manager at the Historic Houses Trust.
The people in the photographs acquired by Ralph Lauren include the conman Sidney ''Pretty Sid'' Grant, safe breaker and house breaker Herbert Ellis and Raymond Neill, also known as ''Gaffney the Gunman''. Despite the diversity of their illegal activities, the men are almost universally clad in dapper three-piece suits topped with jaunty fedoras, exhibiting a flair for fashion that puts today's gangsters to shame.
So taken was Lauren with the sartorial statements of Sydney's razor gangs that he references them in the new campaign for his heritage label RRL.
Several of the shadowy black-and-white images bear striking similarities to the photographs purchased by the company, and feature what appear to be gangsters posing in pinstripe suits with waistcoats and fedoras.
Fashion and lifestyle website Mannamaker observed that the new RRL campaign was ''a near facsimile of more than one photo from the City of Shadows Sydney police mugshot collection … the similarities are undeniable. [But] dare I say these old Aussies had more panache, which authenticity certainly affords them.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/style/catwalk-criminals-as-sharp-as-a-razor-20111129-1o5ap.html#ixzz1f8tRKruZ
The arresting black-and-white portraits of Harbour City low-lifes have been published in two books by the crime novelist Peter Doyle.
Lauren's company came across the books and photographs online and contacted the Historic Houses Trust, which manages the NSW forensic photography archive, in August this year.
Negotiations with Foster Witt, the director of art acquisitions at Polo Ralph Lauren in New York, led to the sale of 10 prints to adorn the Ralph Lauren New York flagship store and another 11 for the London store.
''They had seen Peter Doyle's City of Shadows and Crooks Like Us books and they went onto our website,'' said Alice Livingstone, rights and permissions manager at the Historic Houses Trust.
The people in the photographs acquired by Ralph Lauren include the conman Sidney ''Pretty Sid'' Grant, safe breaker and house breaker Herbert Ellis and Raymond Neill, also known as ''Gaffney the Gunman''. Despite the diversity of their illegal activities, the men are almost universally clad in dapper three-piece suits topped with jaunty fedoras, exhibiting a flair for fashion that puts today's gangsters to shame.
So taken was Lauren with the sartorial statements of Sydney's razor gangs that he references them in the new campaign for his heritage label RRL.
Several of the shadowy black-and-white images bear striking similarities to the photographs purchased by the company, and feature what appear to be gangsters posing in pinstripe suits with waistcoats and fedoras.
Fashion and lifestyle website Mannamaker observed that the new RRL campaign was ''a near facsimile of more than one photo from the City of Shadows Sydney police mugshot collection … the similarities are undeniable. [But] dare I say these old Aussies had more panache, which authenticity certainly affords them.''
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/style/catwalk-criminals-as-sharp-as-a-razor-20111129-1o5ap.html#ixzz1f8tRKruZ
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on WAYWRN thread
