Ralph Lauren’s collection with Morehouse and Spelman is a revision of the

This country doesn’t have anything that might be called a national costume, but certain garments help folks visualize what it means to be that self-invented notion: an American. It’s a challenging persona to fathom. Despite popular culture equating it with blond and blue-eyed, Americans aren’t defined by race or ethnicity. They aren’t defined by their family tree. But still, we stubbornly try to cast an American ideal in human form — an embodiment of all our conceptions about our national character, which include the glories of bootstrap advancement, the power of clear-eyed optimism and a soft-focus romanticization of our rebellious past.

No other designer has been more central to helping us paint a picture of those yearnings and aspirations than Ralph Lauren. Since he founded his company in 1967 based on a single product that encompassed both tradition and possibility — a tie that was slightly wider than the norm — he has been creating clothes that are deeply rooted in the idea of heritage even as they aim to put a bright, shiny polish on contemporary times. He has been inspired by the beautifully dilapidated country cottages of the Atlantic Coast and the wide-open spaces of the West, as well as Wall Street gods, country club scions and big men on campus.

For more than 50 years, Lauren has been writing a tale about what it means to be American. And now he’s made a significant edit. It isn’t so much a correction as it is a clarification.

His new advertising campaign, which includes photographs, picture books and a 30-minute film, announces a partnership with Morehouse College and Spelman College, two institutions rich in both tradition and prestige. They are two of the historically Black colleges and universities that educated Black students during segregation and continue to do so today as predominantly White institutions typically treat Black history as a niche subject to be discussed in the safety of a singular department rather than a discipline intrinsic to the American story. The story of Blackness is a part of our collective history that can cause discomfort and because of that is especially under assault these days.

The clothes in this licensing agreement with the two schools were mostly photographed on students, graduates and faculty — against the backdrop of the two campuses, which neighbor each other in Atlanta. The collection was inspired by images from the schools’ archives of students dating back to the 1920s as they gathered on the yard, in a classroom or on the playing field. Composed of some 100 items, the collection includes the crested jackets favored by Morehouse men, the signature Spelman white cotton attire — which remains a tradition, along with pearls — and the varsity jackets and crew neck sweaters that are staples of the broad college vernacular. It would be tempting to call these looks Ivy League style. But that’s only because those who had the power to codify elements of American achievement didn’t account for Black students. Princeton and Harvard preceded Morehouse in existence, but what was worn on the campuses up North in the 1950s, when they became defined by sack suits, Oxford shirts and rep-stripe ties, was also worn on the campus of Morehouse, which was founded in 1867.

Lauren has shifted his gaze to take in a new vista that has been there all along but one that he simply didn’t see. Until, one day in 2020, he suddenly did.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, in the midst of racial justice protests sweeping across the country, at a time when the populace was profoundly divided, the company’s 23,000 employees gathered in groups virtually for conversations that were intended to be open and honest about the tumult around them and the questions that it raised. In one, the founder asked James Jeter a simple question: “How are you doing?”

“He said, ‘Great. But you know, I’m not sure that this is going to be my future,’ ” Lauren recalled during an interview last week. “I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ And he said, ‘Well, you know, I just don’t know if this is the path. Is this a company that’s going to be all White? … What’s the story with this company?’ ”

Essentially, Jeter wanted to know: “Who are we?”

“When he said that to me, I was sort of surprised and I said, ‘James, there is a future here for you,’ ” Lauren said. This collaboration with Morehouse and Spelman may well be proof of that.

Jeter is one of the New York-based company’s design directors and he’s spent the entirety of his professional career at the brand, starting when he was a stylish, Black teenager obsessed with the company’s aesthetic and working on the sales floor at a Rugby Ralph Lauren shop in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington. Jeter climbed the corporate ladder from intern to design associate to a lead designer. He is also a Morehouse man from the Class of 2013….