He's the king. I would save every penny working in high school and college to buy Polo clothing. I read his first book in the '80s and that's what I wanted to be.

It has such a rich history. And as a little kid, my mom would take me into the city every year to buy a new polo shirt with the pony—that love stuck. And really, I wanted to be a great American designer ... so who better to work for starting out?

At the time, I had quite a bit of reign as a Design Director for J.Crew. It was an enviable position—laying down the DNA for the future of the brand. It would have been very easy to keep on doing what I was doing. But, going to work at RL was like going to play for the Yankees—it was the top.

I shared Ralph's love for Americana. That was natural. And then there was the drive to help build meaning and experience within the brand. We were a diverse group of people working to make one hell of a big movie.

I think it all starts with those massive inspiration boards for every project and season. I definitely bought into that one. First thing we bought for the office here was a huge rolling cork board and a million aluminum push pins.

They call it "rigging." It's when you style out a room for mood and color using vintage apparel and inspiration photos. I walked into one of those rooms my first week and was blown away. It sets the whole stage for the collection you're about to design.

I was consistently in awe of their ability to take a single image and use that as a base to transform an empty room into a vintage filled world brimming with ideas and inspiration. It is a straight forward, concise path for getting from an abstract concept to a final collection. It is hard not to work that way once you have experienced how inspiring a concept rig room can be.

All the great ideas were anchored in some historical or tangible reference. A great shape from a bygone era. Wonderful interpretations of heritage product.

Creativity was driven by research and reference and then activated by modern terms and conditions. This is exactly how I approach my work today—it's sort of like being an anthropologist merchant.

Just the fact that you're literally surrounded with good taste. It really gave me the opportunity to immerse myself in American history, icons and culture. To have the opportunity to work on the collection and see it come together is like being a part of a really good movie set.

I got to spend my day creating these amazingly detailed worlds—it was really more like theater design than retail.

It was fantastic story telling—writing a narrative that added meaning and context to beautiful products.

Working with guys like John Vizzone. And the view from my desk.

I was able to travel the world at a young age to work directly with our fabric mills and factories.

You work with the best factories and fabric mills in the world. And really, you have no price restrictions when creating a collection.

They let me have a fish—a bright red Betta named "Flash". It's sounds silly, but I used to keep him in a small bowl on my desk at the RL office, and now he's here on the desk in my studio. He's a real reminder that with hard work and diligence, it's possible to have my own name on the label.

I worked for John Varvatos while I was there. He was the hardest working person I ever met and it was tough to keep up with him. His work ethic brought me to another level.

There was a level of quality and consistency at Ralph Lauren that was a bear to produce. Helping to grow that message at scale was nothing short of difficult. You weren't really allowed to have an "off day". There was a good dose of healthy self discipline that we needed to have. Or learn quickly!

Working for the pickiest guys in the world—Ralph, and his brother Jerry. But it's what has made them so successful, that attention to taste and detail.

Getting dressed every morning.

It was a daily competition for outfits. This was well before the Sartorialist or being photographed on the street, and all the creatives dressing very creatively were really just doing so because they liked it. But on a more serious note, Ralph and Jerry and the team demanded real excellence and the very best from us. It required a lot of hours and total commitment—not a job for the faint of heart.

For me, it was being bound by a single product category. I always knew I wanted to tell a complete story, not solely a single element of one.

I remember a walk through with Ralph and he randomly picked up a pair of corduroys and hated the quality of the goods. He started ripping into people about keeping the quality up. It was at that meeting that I had a revelation—that he, literally RL the man himself—is responsible for keeping the quality up and that is why his company is still standing while everyone else has sold out or gone out of business. I also learned a lot about how the finance arm of a creative business is usually at odds with the creative aspect, particularly after it has to answer to shareholders.

My former boss (and longtime mentor) John Yang taught me that, more than anything, great clothing has a clear purpose, context and sense of history. I remember, shortly after I started, a time when he asked me to design a field jacket. After about an hour of furious drawing, erasing and repeating, I presented him with something I thought looked very cool. We sat down together to review it and the first words out of his mouth were "This is a mess." Incredulous, I asked why. "Because what you've drawn comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. The silhouette is obviously based on an L.L. Bean hunting coat, but it's belted like an international jacket. You reference an M-65 with the collar shape, but it has the pockets of an M-43. You need to really understand and respect all of these garments and why they were created before you start throwing them all together haphazardly."

He definitely taught me that disrupting the process often resulted in a better collection.

One thing that really stuck with me was RL's focus and attention on building the brand. Designing and manicuring each individual collection each season was important to RL and to us as the design team, but it was the over arching concept of building brand consistency that stuck with me after I left the company. At the time, much of what we did seemed to be so tightly woven into a sort of RL formula, and at times appeared to be a little repetitive. But it was only later that I realized that it is this regimented consistency that has defined RL as one of the greatest icons in men's fashion and that has significantly contributed to building one of the most powerful and internationally recognized brands in the world.

As we were starting RRL, we talked about how we needed to make a very authentic looking jean. One that you couldn't tell apart from a true vintage jean. I spent months working on a stone washing process in our lab in North Carolina and our production facility in Texas. We developed a double tinting and washing process that produced impressive results. I made a bunch of jeans in different fabrics using this process and was so excited to show them to the team back in New York. We all reviewed them and thought they were great—ready to show Ralph. I was 23 years old at this point. We rigged the room with mannequins fully dressed. We put a few in our new jeans and a few in vintage. Once we were ready, I called in Ralph. He looked around and was impressed. He commended me on the work and it was clear we were all happy with the results. But a few weeks later, I got a phone call from Ralph's office. He wanted to see me in the showroom. When I went into the room, there were a bunch of jeans on the floor and Ralph simply said, "We can't launch a new denim line with these. The jeans just don't look authentic. You can do better Eric." I was devastated and not sure what to do. After much thought, I ended up in an old dry cleaning facility in Kansas City, where we processed leather in the past. I had the idea of running denim jeans in a dry cleaning process to impart color—something that was never done before. After many tests and hundreds of jeans later, I had a few that I felt were nice enough to show to Ralph. Once again, I set up the showroom with the new jeans and called him in. He loved it, really loved it this time and a few weeks later, he called me back to his office and said he wanted to patent the process. He felt strongly that we needed to own it and protect it. Well, it's now registered with the US government as patent #5,653,770.

I had an inspiring get together with Ralph in his office on a cold, wintry evening on Madison Avenue. His warmth and honesty about what he loves is just incredible. He invited me to explore his amazing collection of unique objects, art and curiosities while sharing with me their backgrounds. I realized then that the source of his narrative is based on an authentic connection. His love for history, stories, people and travel is so real. It's like his life's work is a montage of his internal passions. His business is the by-product of who he is. Once you engage your inspiration, it becomes an incredible source of motivation. Your work becomes an extension of what you love. I suppose that Ralph helped reveal to me the distinction between "a job" and something bigger.