Buffy Birrittella, executive vice president, senior adviser to Ralph Lauren, and senior creative director of Ralph Lauren Womenswear, has decided to retire after 50 years with the company. She plans to leave at the end of the month, and no successor will be named.
“I told him, ‘Hire me three days a week,'” Birrittella told WWD in 2007, recalling her hopes to continue writing freelance on the side. After going on an assignment to Israel, then on vacation, Lauren said to her, “‘When do you come to work? You either have to work full-time or I’m going to find someone like you.’ I said, ‘There’s no one like me,’ and he recognized a similar spirit as himself in me,” she said.
Among Birrittella’s duties during her tenure were design and advertising of all Ralph Lauren women’s collections and products, reporting right to Lauren. She also worked with Lauren on establishing an “It” bag for him. “We had been working on that for several years and it was the hardest thing to come up with a bag he felt was the ‘It’ bag for him — not just the ‘It’ bag of the season, but an iconic Ralph Lauren bag,” Birrittella told WWD in 2007, discussing the crocodile Ricky bag.
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