It’s not uncommon to hear someone say that fashion’s in their blood. For Greg Lauren, though, it’s a legitimate claim. Lauren, of course, is nephew to Ralph Lauren, a designer whose importance in American fashion cannot be overstated. What began as one of Greg’s art exhibitions—fifty delicate, stately paper reproductions of classic garments—has become a full-fledged second career. Lauren produced his first full collections in 2011 and has been going strong ever since, gaining support from a who’s who of tastemaking retailers. Most recently, Dover Street Market New York featured an installation showcasing his Spring 2015 collection. His work in fashion is devoted to the many of same themes as his painting—excavating Americana and trying to reconcile our public projections with our interior lives. This interview has been edited and condensed. 

Could you walk us through the development of your most recent collection, Fall 2015?

I love creating a collection for a show because it feels like I have a chance to tell a story, or to express an emotional theme, or an experience for the people who are coming to the show, and also for those who get to see it as it lives online, in images. I wanted this to be a continuation of my first show, and I wanted to take that artistic, nomadic, destroyed elegance that’s the key idea behind all of my work and move the story into a kind of outdoor environment, because the show I had done for Spring 2015 was very clear about the world that we were in. I know you asked about Fall 2015, but I’m returning to the spring show just to explain how we got there.

I had this vision for the Spring 2015 show that we were in this unique space that was some part Casablanca, some part a French café that Edith Piaf would be singing at, and some part the bar in Star Wars. Those are references that make up the way I approach things, because I was exposed to amazing references as a child that were classic, or that were old Hollywood, and then I had my own heroes that replaced the things I inherited. That’s much more about being a product of the ‘70s and ‘80s. I loved things like The Bionic Man and Mad Max and, obviously, Star Wars, and so there’s a very interesting thing that’s happened with all those references mixing together.

For the Spring 2015 show, I had this concept for an environment that was taking a vintage army tent and creating a café that was some strange mix of familiar but not specific things. The tables were all made from reclaimed wood from shipping pallets and the stands to the tables were all dual stands from dress forms. We took images and sketches of mine and laminated them into the wood. I wanted to create this world that felt like part military mess hall, part artist’s studio, part café, yet you had no idea where it was in time, you know? It could be the past, it could be the future. There’s this strange combination of feeling like you’re very present, yet longing for something that maybe the world I’ve created is making you reminisce about. Usually, those contradictions create the emotional response that I’m looking for.

Your Star Wars reference really brings it home for me. The look is clearly futuristic, but at the same time they’re telling you it’s in the past—a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. There’s a weird temporal thing happening there.

Absolutely, and what makes Star Wars so interesting, more so when I reflect back on it now, is that it’s the ultimate classic story structure, it’s referencing all kinds of things that were familiar to us from classic war movies, and yet it’s a space movie. I fell in love with even the way the way the X-Wing fighters were chipped up and banged up the way a World War II plane would be, and that really struck me and stayed with me.

I was exposed to the most beautiful clothing as a child, both in terms of the things that were being referenced as well as the clothing that I grew up around through my family, and yet it was so symbolic of a certain set of icons and heroes that, in many ways, I know I’ve spent my artistic career kind of destroying it to try to understand it. And all my clothing embraces imperfection rather that one kind of clear sense of home or place. I really embrace a kind of nomadic spirit. The times we’re living in, I think we all want to keep moving. The internet has made it such a truly global village that I really wanted to represent that in the spring collection in the environment that I showed it in.

I cast my models intentionally. I wanted a very diverse group, a non-specific type of beauty, a beauty that was much more about people’s individuality. That’s what I told the models before they walked. I said, “look, I want you guys to own your sense of self.” This is not about my visions of who you are. I don’t even want any kind of walk that you’ve ever learned from some catwalk school or another designer. I want you. I want you to bring your personality and your individuality to that runway. It’s perfect for my clothing. That show was very much about a gathering of artistic warriors. These are the types of images that move me. From the very first season, I’ve been obsessed with understanding our obsession with military clothing. Not just because of the beauty and the form and the function of it, but more about the emotional connection that we seem to have to military clothing and to that culture. I just think it’s so interesting to me that we all really want to look and feel like soldiers without actually being one. I grew up with this being spoon fed to me, and now I think it’s universal, but by wearing something you can actually inherit the story of the character that you’re dressing like. So, you not only get to look like the person, but somehow it’s as if you actually achieve what that person achieved. You get their courage, you get their athletic feats, you get their artistic ability if you dress that way. And that fascinates me. It’s why I love vintage fabrics, and deconstructing and re-purposing garments and turning them into my own. I love using things that have a story, and that have a soul, and that came from somewhere. By putting them together in an ironic way it makes a statement about that obsession we have with vintage clothing and the idea of fashion as costume.

Can you explain what you mean by putting them together ironically?

The epitome of that from the most recent collection would be taking a beautiful English chalk-stripe wool and creating a three-piece suit that is half charcoal chalk-stripe fabric and half vintage Perfecto motorcycle jacket. For Spring ’15, it was using classic pinstripe and mixing it with fragments from vintage denim work jackets, specifically engineer or chore jackets. That speaks to the heart of what I’m trying to look at. One moment we feel like we want to be like Cary Grant and we want to be in a pinstripe suit, and the next minute we feel like we need a little bit of attitude, or edge, or strength, so we dress like we just got off the farm, or we just finished working on our car or bike, whether or not we’ve actually ever done that in our lives.

I love taking the things that we’re obsessed with and looking at them in that way. It’s about my own confusion, trying to understand who we want to be, who we think we’re allowed to be, who we need to show people we are by the way we dress.

We’ve developed a sort of cultural shorthand for what garments mean. You mentioned the Perfecto jacket—it’s this persistent symbol of cool that’s never wavered since Marlon Brando put it on.

And that’s why our own motorcycle jackets are called the Brando. Anything biker still feels like Brando to me. That’s even how I title the styles. A lot of my style names are based on the icons who made the original thing famous.

We seem to be recycling these same referents over and over. Do you see us creating any new icons?

I don’t think we have yet. I think that we’re on the cusp of it, but I don’t think we’re there yet.

In a way, I’m asking the same question in my work. When I approach making clothing,  the process is breaking down the things I’m trying to explore. I feel best, I feel most successful, if after breaking down those things something new is born. Right now, we’re at the place where we’re fighting our reliance on the past and looking for something new, but we haven’t gotten it yet. Because it’s not as simple as it being about technology, it’s not as simple as it being about technological fabrics. To me, that’s still an aesthetic. We haven’t gotten to that place where something truly new has changed the way we make things or wear things. Men’s jackets are still men’s jackets.

I think part of the challenge is that the icons are born from the arts. Music and film would be the top two places that create pop cultural icons, but the crossover of so many disciplines is making it an exciting time. More than ever, athletes love fashion. Fashion has become such an aspirational industry. Not just in terms of the message, but people want to be in fashion. Being a designer has joined the ranks of what the younger generation thinks is something exciting to become.

Deconstruction is a big theme for you. A lot of your influences come from being around clothing growing up, classic Americana, but that approach was also big among the European avant-garde in the late 1990s, early 2000s. Margiela, Helmut Lang. Was that an influence, as well, or was it not really on your radar?

It wasn’t on my radar when I began. I started making clothing as a result of an art exhibition that I did. In 2009, I had an exhibition called Alteration. As a painter, I was already trying to take a look at the idea of the persona, and identity, and image development.

I learned about clothing because of what the garments meant, what they stood for, how people wore them. There was a direct connection between the type of man one should aspire to be, or the kind of characters you were allowed to be, and how they dressed. I learned to sew so I could make the fifty most iconic mens garments out of paper. That was the turning point for me. I went and found, either in my own closet, or winter, the actual piece. The classic wool duffle coat, the classic work jacket, the red-and-black buffalo plaid L.L.Bean wool shirt, the café racer jacket—each one represented an archetype, and I made each one out of paper, true to the way it would’ve been sewn if it had been made on an industrial sewing machine. So, suddenly, all these garments I’d gotten to know and love on the outside, I started to learn about from the inside. I learned how to turn a lapel, I learned how to create a collar, to set a sleeve. It opened up my eyes to whole new world. By making these iconic pieces out of paper, I was celebrating them, I was interrogating them, and in many ways I was saying goodbye to them.

I started making one-of-kind pieces from wearable fabrics, and, strangely, they had such an incredible personality of their own. That’s where I found my own voice. I was making these things that were unique and individual that didn’t follow any of the rules I’d just learned. So, I was making a suit out of paper that would’ve looked great on any of the icons who wore a suit like that, but the ones that I made from real fabric really came to life. They had no reference, they weren’t connected to anything except what I was feeling that day. And I found that very interesting, and it made me start to ask the question, “Why can’t clothing show what’s going on on the inside instead of becoming armour we hide behind?” A certain kind of armour of image.

Something really clicked when I made a peak lapel suit jacket out of destroyed military duffle bags. That was the first thing I did that’s become a signature piece. I was combining two different things that were characters that I’d learned to love, and there was something interesting about using fabric that would have been thrown away. It was the utilitarian side of a soldier’s equipment, but it resonated with me more than the glamorous military images I’d grown up seeing. It wasn’t about a flowing white scarf or a bomber jacket, it was about something much more basic, and had a lot of pain mixed in with beauty.

Where do you think that pain comes from?

Everyone has something, whether it’s obvious, or not that obvious. I know what it’s like to grow up in a family that, from the outside, seems picture-perfect. I’m grateful for everything that my family has allowed me to have, the opportunities that come with it, but it is a mixed bag of blessings, and it’s not one that’s without its own specific kind of pain.

What I love about fashion right now—and I feel like I’m part of a movement—is that the pain coexists with the beauty. And that’s the world we’re living in right now. It’s not that long ago that everything was about hiding the pain, and using the beauty to ignore the pain, to cover the pain. You create something beautiful that distracts us from that. And that’s okay! That’s what they needed. But for me, the more we live in that in-between and are willing to embrace all the scars, all the stories along the way, that excites me.

I had someone in my studio the other day, an actress I was making some stuff for. She wrote me later and said, “Thank you for encouraging me to be me.” That came from a part of our conversation where I said, “I don’t know who’s putting you in certain clothing, but it feels like it’s hiding the person really is in there.” If you asked me what would be one goal of mine, it would be that if someone sees a piece of mine, let alone wears it, I would hope that they would feel something emotional before anything else. I don’t want to make things that are too intellectual or high-brow. If someone doesn’t even get it and they just love it, then I’ve also done my job. If someone looks at something and goes, “Wow, that’s great. Navy pinstripe and denim, that’s great,” that makes me smile just as much. They may not get that I’m commenting on us trying to figure out who we are. We’re constantly trying to figure out who we are, and fashion is the most immediate, visceral form of self-expression out there right now.

I love that paper collection, and, when I was looking at it again today, I was particularly drawn to the hoodie. In the past couple years, and especially after the murder of Trayvon Martin, the hoodie’s taken on a lot of symbolic weight.

The hoodie has almost replaced in the biker jacket in today’s culture. It holds that same place. It may not be as glamorous as the biker jacket—

Not yet, anyways.

Right. As we speak, it’s becoming the newest canvas for luxury.

When teens started wearing white tees and blue jeans, people were scandalized. There are still clubs that bar you from entering if you’re wearing a hoodie. But at the same time, it’s being folded into the luxury cannon. I wonder if that’s a similar dynamic playing itself out.

I think it’s no surprise that the single most successful style for me last season was a hoodie that was half heather grey fleece, half army tent. The hoodie represents so many things to so many people. It’s it’s Rocky, it’s rebel, it’s street, it’s activewear, it’s comfort, it’s workwear, it’s all of the above.

We’re living in time where people are more fit and athletic than ever, and the kind of fitness people are doing is more diverse and explosive. Gone are the days of just treadmill and some weights. The hoodie has become heroic in many ways. Whenever something is born out of the counter-culture and becomes heroic, it’s on its way to being embraced and getting appropriated into the luxury world. And it works in reverse as well. The minute the fashionable upper class adopts something, then, of course, everybody wants it, and it works both ways. We’ve been seeing that forever.

Q&A by Adam Wray, Curator of FashionREDEF. You can follow Adam on REDEF and Twitter (@FashionREDEF, @terminal_avenue), or reach him at adam.wray@redefgroup.com