Few designers embody their labels quite as succinctly as Mr Ralph Lauren, the man who made the American dream a sartorial reality. Fewer still can claim to have the range he does. Among his vast roster of 15 brands, there’s the preppy Polo line, clean-cut Purple Label and Western-inspired RRL, all distinct and yet all unmistakably Ralph Lauren.

There’s perhaps no better example of this eclecticism than the man himself, whose own wardrobe is as diverse as the country he calls home. “Style is very personal,” is how he once put it. “It has nothing to do with fashion. Fashion is over quickly. Style is for ever.” And so, in celebration of Mr Lauren’s 80th birthday and that spirit of individualism, here are five ways he made it his own.

No one wears a tuxedo quite like Mr Lauren. Since the 1970s, the designer has preferred to out his own spin on black tie. “I have always loved contradiction and the unexpected,” he once wrote. “When Ricky [his wife] and I first started going to black-tie events, I hated wearing a straight tuxedo. I felt that I had somehow lost my identity. I’d wear my jeans and boots with a tuxedo jacket or a Western shirt and cowboy tie.” If you’ve had a sudden impulse to try this at home, don’t bother. On anyone else, it’ll look like you’ve forgotten to collect your trousers from the dry cleaner. On Mr Lauren? Genius.

Double denim remains one of the thorniest trends to pull off. There’s a lesson to be learned in Mr Lauren’s take here – go all in. A Western-style shirt plus distressed jeans (in a different wash) with a substantially buckled belt and, of course, those cowboy boots demonstrate the designer’s appreciation for his homeland’s sartorial traditions. You might call it a Canadian tuxedo, but here, it’s as American as apple pie.

Despite all the sartorial revolutions Mr Lauren ushered in – polo shirts, the camel coat, button-down Oxford shirts – his role in reviving the safari trend is often overlooked. A couple of years before Mr Sydney Pollack’s Out Of Africa had us all contemplating whether we could pull off a hunter’s hat in the manner of Mr Robert Redford, the designer debuted his collection of field jackets, shirts and a cornucopia of khaki-toned pieces. It was a theme he’d return to time and again, including in 1996, when he took his bow at New York Fashion Week in this billowy camel-coloured shirt.

Ralph Lauren’s designs are timeless, so much so that this shot, taken in the Hamptons in the 1970s, could plausibly substitute the campaign for the most recent RRL collection – Mr Lauren’s rough-and-ready line named after and inspired by his ranch in Colorado. Aside from the cocked Stetson, it’s the well-proportioned shearling jacket, which has been deftly layered over a buffalo-checked shirt and denim waistcoat, that steals the show. Well, that, and the man himself.

Taken after Ralph Lauren’s 1990s Snow Beach era – when the Wu-Tang Clan clad themselves top-to-toe in Polo Sport and the Lo Life Crew were looting it from stores – this look is further proof of Mr Lauren’s versatility as well as his good sense. New York City can feel colder than the Arctic at times. The dazzling white down jacket from ski brand Killy paired with stompy hiking-style boots proves that Mr Lauren’s reading of quintessentially American dress codes doesn’t start and end with prep.