How to dress your boyfriend like Ralph Lauren

Layered knitwear, plus brown leather, plus navy. That is it. Every Ralph Lauren campaign photograph you have ever pinned is some arrangement of those three things, with the occasional stripe or check to break it up.

The reason it works on almost everybody is that none of the three elements is trend-dependent. A navy crewneck over an Oxford shirt looked correct in 1985 and will look correct in 2040, which is a claim very few looks can make.

Most people start by buying him an Oxford button-down, which is reasonable and also the least visible part of the outfit. Knitwear is what people see. A cable knit or a cashmere crewneck changes his silhouette; a shirt underneath it changes almost nothing from ten feet away.

Buy washable cashmere if you are buying for a man who does his own laundry. Untreated cashmere in a normal wash cycle has a short life, and a jumper he is afraid to wear is worse than one he wears constantly.

Brown, in three places: shoes, belt, watch strap. They do not need to match exactly — matching exactly is a slightly dated instinct — but they should be in the same family. Black leather with this aesthetic reads as a different look entirely.

One brown leather jacket is the biggest single upgrade available. Soft lambskin in a shirt-jacket cut works over a knit and under a topcoat, which is more than a motorcycle jacket can say.

Do not wear more than one obviously preppy element at a time. A cable knit is preppy; a cable knit with a striped rugby shirt, chinos and boat shoes is a costume. Anchor the look with plain items and let one piece carry the reference.

And leave the logo off. Ralph Lauren style and Ralph Lauren branding are two different things — the aesthetic was built from Ivy League and English country clothing that had no logos at all.