Ralph Lauren Dreams in California

SAN MARINO, Calif. — Ralph Lauren’s strength — the thing that has kept the all-American company going for 55 years — is world building. Or, rather, worlds building. Each brand under the company’s umbrella represents a different aesthetic universe: a Western saloon (Double RL), the Hamptons social circuit (Purple Label), an old collegiate quad buzzing…

Can Balenciaga Break With Kanye?

Mr. Galliano is the former Dior designer who was fired after a drunken antisemitic rant in a Paris bar, and who was later subject to a court trial (in France, inciting racial hatred is a crime), fined and forced out of fashion until he had gone through rehabilitation and made years of amends. But therein…

The Fight for the Soul of Pilates

‘Around the Clock’ Last fall, Christina Gadar, a Pilates instructor in Sarasota, Fla., planned to post on Instagram a photo that showed her recreating Mr. Pilates’s “Around the Clock” flier. Because she knew of Mr. Gallagher’s disagreements with other Pilates instructors, she informed him of her plan in an email, she said. He replied that…