“The Ralph Lauren Home collection was the invention of lifestyle marketing,” says designer Bill Sofield, who worked on and off for Lauren for 10 years in the very early stages of the home collection. “It was so unusual at the time that what was a clothing brand embraced furniture.” Indeed, who would ever think of turning a denim prairie skirt into a dust ruffle, or a Navajo blanket into a rug? It may have seemed unusual to the outside world, but the progression was perfectly natural for Lauren.