When the team at Ralph Lauren asked me to make a few remarks at a ceremony unveiling a new collection of stamps curated by the designer himself, I couldn’t say yes fast enough. So I found myself in the magnificent James A. Farley building of the U.S. Postal Service on a beautiful, temperate Tuesday morning, along with Ralph’s family, colleagues, postal service employees, and admirers.
Ralph is 86 and slowing down a bit, but it was wonderful to be in his presence. I was decked out head to toe in one of his beautiful suits — navy, striped shirt, stylish brown sandals — and I felt like a million bucks.
I thought you’d like to read the remarks that followed the unveiling of the stamps, including the ones made by Frank Bennack, former CEO of Hearst and Ralph Lauren board member, whose reminiscences about his father moved me so much.
My reflection on Ralph Lauren's legacy
Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of a New York Knicks loss at Madison Square Garden could keep me from being here today. I am deeply honored to say a few words as we celebrate this beautiful collection of Ralph Lauren curated stamps in honor of this nation’s 250th birthday. The word "icon" gets thrown around an awful lot these days, but when you look this word up in the dictionary, there should be a photo of Ralph. I guess it’s a sign of the times that the first definition is "a graphic symbol on a display screen that represents an app, object, or function." But if we’re talking about Ralph, it’s "a person or thing widely admired, especially for having great influence or significance in a particular sphere." And for Ralph Lauren, that sphere is American life.
Ralph is the embodiment of the American Dream. Brilliant. Creative. Innovative.
Ralph is everything I admire in a person. He is self-made. He wasn’t born on third base thinking he hit a triple, as the late Ann Richards used to say. His origin story is the stuff of legend. Raised in a modest Jewish immigrant household in the Bronx, he famously listed his career goals in his high school yearbook with one simple word: millionaire. Ralph is the embodiment of the American Dream. Brilliant. Creative. Innovative. In the process of building an empire, he never lost his humility. And it’s who Ralph is as a human being, not a businessman, that has made me always revere him.
I love how much Ralph loves his family. They are everything. And as I look out at your beautiful family today, I’m reminded how you have never lost sight of what is important.
I love how much Ralph believes in helping others. As someone who lost her husband to colon cancer at 42, as a breast cancer survivor myself, and as co-founder of Stand Up to Cancer, I so appreciate his advocacy for cancer research. After an up close and personal experience with a thankfully benign brain tumor and the subsequent diagnosis of his good friend, fashion editor Nina Hyde, whose articles in the Washington Post I read growing up, Ralph realized he could use his power, position, and platform to truly move the needle. Not only by supporting cancer research, but also by addressing the serious and troubling inequities in cancer treatment.
Now more than ever, we need heroes — people we look up to and want to emulate.
For nearly 25 years, the MSK Ralph Lauren Center in Harlem has brought quality care to underserved patients who often lack access, and as part of a $25 million pledge, Ralph has created multiple cancer centers. The Ralph Lauren Center for Cancer Prevention at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center opened in 2023. Ralph already has a longstanding history of support there, starting with the Nina Hyde Center for Breast Cancer Research at Georgetown, established 37 years ago.
The USC Norris Ralph Lauren Center opened in 2024, and later this year, the UChicago Medicine Ralph Lauren Center will address delivery gaps along the cancer care continuum, from early detection to connecting patients with treatment, to survivorship and supportive services such as transportation, nutrition, financial counseling, and integrative therapies.
And, with all due respect, in the year 2000, when Chappell Roan was just 2 years old, Ralph became the founding member of the Pink Pony Club, a global campaign that focuses on research, screenings, early diagnosis, treatment education, and patient navigation for cancer patients across the country.
Now more than ever, we need heroes — people we look up to and want to emulate. My daughter Ellie took a class in high school here in New York City called "moral exemplars." Pretty heavy stuff for an 11th grader. But as I learned about the people she studied, I realized individuals of this caliber are few and far between. Returning to Mr. Webster, a moral exemplar is an “individual who embodies ethical virtues and serves as a model of moral behavior. Their life, decisions, and daily actions act as an ethical benchmark, inspiring others to cultivate strong moral character, make better choices, and pursue a virtuous life.” Not to give you a big head, Ralph, but that is what you are to me.
I can’t think of a better way to mark this huge milestone in the great American experiment than to issue a collection of stamps that remind us of the values that truly make America great, by a man who lives those values every single day. Thank you for that, Ralph, and congratulations.
Frank A. Bennack Jr.'s remarks
Good morning.
Thank you to the United States Postal Service for inviting me to join this first-day-of-Issue ceremony for the Ralph Lauren American Icons commemorative stamps.
I'm Frank Bennack, proud member of the Board of the Ralph Lauren Corporation, and coincidentally the proud son of a career United States Postal letter carrier. It is an honor to be here at the post office named for James A. Farley, the FDR-era postmaster general whose name was spoken with great reverence in my childhood home by my father, letter carrier Frank A. Bennack, Sr.
Today I'm privileged to speak about Ralph Lauren and his remarkable perception of what America means to the rest of us and how he expresses it in so many of his creations. Today we praise the images that make up the remarkable American Icon stamps. Perhaps not since Norman Rockwell's legendary Saturday Evening Post covers has anyone more vibrantly portrayed American imagery than Ralph Lauren. He has been a great American storyteller. Not in words, but in images, in apparel, in décor, in color, and in texture.
Today, a new dimension is added, via the United States Postal Service asking Ralph, in honor of 250 years of the United States of America, to curate 13 photographs from his archive and from images that have inspired him. They also will inspire millions of others at home and abroad.
His achievements have resulted in numerous honors from around the world, including the coveted Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to him in 2025.
The stamps demonstrate his unique talent for interpreting what represents us. Each of us will imagine their meaning in our own way. The Jackie Robinson baseball glove suggests fair competition and equality. The weathered pickup truck speaks of work and utility. The Teddy bear of love and tenderness, and the lighthouse of guidance. All who see them will have their own interpretation, but all will be inspired. And at the center is Ralph's familiar knitted interpretation of the American flag marked 1776-2026, which will remind millions of the privilege we have in being participants in this 250-year experiment.
I said earlier that today is a special privilege for me. My decades-long personal and professional association with Ralph means so much to me. Today also brings me back to my youth as the son of a letter carrier who believed his job and the service he rendered was unexcelled in importance. In the dark days of the Great Depression, my dad had been laid off from the great Colgate Palmolive Peet company, as it was called then. With a family to be supported, he learned that the main post office in San Antonio, Texas, had what was known as a swing room. A place you could gather and hope for a single shift as a letter carrier. The opportunities were few, but he showed up every day. Then a special day came. I will never forget the day in, I believe, 1939, when I was 6 years old, and he came home the most excited I had ever seen him. He had become a "regular man" — a full-time civil service letter carrier.
In our family, the Post Office did not simply deliver letters. It delivered stability, dignity, and the chance for a kid to dream a little bigger.
The depression ended, but he never gave any consideration to any other job. He carried that mail sack over his shoulder for more than a quarter century. Those on the route he served loved him as family. I don't think he ever even had a dog bite him.
So today, I disclose my justifiable bias on two fronts. I was raised to respect the mail. In our family, the post office did not simply deliver letters. It delivered stability, dignity, and the chance for a kid to dream a little bigger. The second bias is one I am also confident in by virtue of decades of observing and admiring Ralph Lauren. He is a gentle and caring man. And he is a connoisseur of how we and our world should look.
I've had a ringside seat to his rise to being an unexcelled icon himself. Ralph has never simply sold things. He has given people a sense of belonging to an American story open enough for everyone to dream about and, indeed, become a part of. That is why the stamps feel authentic. Like everything he creates, they are not fleeting. They are not costume. They are not nostalgia for its own sake. They are reminders of freedom,independence, opportunity, equality, and the pursuit of happiness.
Perhaps it was intended for another meaning, but one word on the stamps might tell the story best: forever.
Congratulations, Ralph. Congratulations, and thank you to the United States Postal Service for this historic and beautiful collection.
Want to bring Ralph Lauren's one-of-a-kind sophistication to your own mail? Shop his curated collection of stamps here.
