Vintage Polo by Ralph Lauren Snow Beach Pullover

So Ralph Lauren re-releases the infamous Snow Beach Pullover for his latest collection. The jacket was first brought to the mass public of the hip-hop community when Raekwon rocked it in Wu-Tangs "Can It all be so simple" Video. Around the time this jacket came out a lot of original Lo-Lifes were more interested in getting their paws on Pelle Pelle Leathers. Lo was becoming more accessible to the masses and older heads who had grown up on Polo, was starting to fade away from brand because it was starting to lose it's exclusivity. Ralph had a few collections that he released prior to this that was more earth tones and less logo driven. At the time we were confused as boosters to why he would mess up the perfect formula he had developed. My assumption is that once corporate figured out that the so called urban market gravitated more to the colorful apparel with the logos, I guess Ralph figured he would scale down the color pallet to thwart this particular market and catering to a more refined customer. That didn't work, and a lot of the merchandise that department store purchased had to come to some terms about charge backs to the company. lots of times the stores dumped the leftover merchandise to discount retailers such as Burlington Coat Factory, Syms, BFOs, Filenes Basement, Tj Maxx, Marshalls and Century 21 just to name a few. When Ralph backed away from the bright color schemes Tommy Hilfiger just picked up where he left the baton and ran with it as far as he could. Even though we were Lo-Lifes most of us gravitated to the brand with the most stand out designs, and that was Tommy. Instead of backing away from the urban market Tommy Hilfiger ran full steam ahead towards it, hence the Grand Puba era. When Ralph saw the momentum Tommy was getting in menswear market the Polo brand quickly had to revert it's plan and go back to what had been working best for them from the beginning.  

I know when Rae copped this jacket he just wanted to get an ill jacket that would look real splashy on the camera and resonate with the hood on some come through shit. exactly how the imagery of this shot was captured of him and Ghost chilling in the hood fresh rapping in front of the bodega was art imitating life at it's finest. This is the real Ralph Lauren ad because this is how the people looked who really wore his clothes religiously. This is how they were in everyday life. Just chilling in Mercedes Benz's, smoking weed while pumping Hip-Hop out of the systems. You will see more kids of a darker skin tone seen wearing this jacket back when it came out than blond head snowboarders that's just a fact. For a music culture that was created just a few decades ago to have been said to not last to going on to being the top music genre and crutch for lots of these corporations today is sort of ironic. Don't you think Ralph doesn't wish that all of the notoriety for this particular collection or any of his collections to have been celebrated by kids who wore it throughout their high school and college years at Yale and Harvard and took pictures Polo down on the steps of the university libraries and archived them? All of them dudes would have modeling careers , been in ad campaigns and got boxes of the apparel sent to them. Trust me I'm not looking for that or writing this to look for a check from corporate. I does this for the culture. For the right and not the wrong. If it's anybody in this situation that deserves a check that's Raekwon. He probably thinking yeah that's cool and all that Ralph wants to remake the jacket but at the end of the day... Raekwon made it hot he did that, Lo-Lifes did that. And this is just to show people their value. Sometimes we may get a moment of glorification and stroking of the ego to be complimented on our outfits, but when you become a free billboard that benefits everyone else but yourself that's going to hurt. Ralph is going to make millions on top of millions off this while brothers are still out here trying to figure it out. The culture is tired of getting the short end of the stick. The least Ralph can do is send Raekwon a box of Jackets and a check or lifetime 50% off at any Polo mansion in the world. Shit! he can send every original Lo-Life a box of clothes and a check. It's no more than a hundred and fifty original members anyway. (Some which who are deceased) Ralph gave out more promotional apparel at Wimbledon and the Olympics so why can't he? All of the apparel is made overseas in China, Sri Lanka or Pakistan anyway so it doesn't cost much to make. It's a multi Billion dollar company, they can write that off as an marketing expense.