PROGRESS REPORT

ISSUE #141

The Case for Space

On a long flight back from Greece recently, I put on Very Ralph, the Ralph Lauren documentary. I imagined I would hear about Ralph Lauren’s WASP-y heritage—growing up in a beautiful New England house on a ranch that inspired his fashion. But then I learned Ralph Lauren’s real story.

He was born in The Bronx as Ralph Lifshitz, to immigrants who escaped Belarus in the 1920s. His father was a house painter and his mother a homemaker. Coming from this background, his inspirations weren’t from the “old money” lifestyle, but the grit of working-class Americans: blue-collar uniforms, Western ruggedness, and military wear. In building his brand, Ralph saw value where insiders overlooked it and reimagined the symbols of power—not as barriers meant to exclude him, but as a world he could claim and remake.

Now, neither the documentary nor the brand frame it this way. Very Ralph doesn’t even say his family came from Belarus—just Europe. But in that silence, I filled the gaps. As a child of immigrants, I saw myself in his story. It made me realize something bigger: strong, lasting brands don’t have to hand you the whole story. They leave just enough room for you to participate.

When participation is lost.

We live in a world where our chance to participate in our own lives feels increasingly scarce. AI drafts dating app messages before they’re even sent. Auto-complete interrupts the creative act of finishing your own thought. Reviews tell you how to experience an album, movie, or restaurant before you’ve even tried it yourself. We’re living in a culture that overexplains. And in doing so, it robs us of the most vital part of any story: our role in shaping it.

But there’s not just a human-level loss when participation is cut out—brands suffer too. Participation can be one of brands’ richest resources.

Participation fuels longevity.

When stories leave room for participation, people don’t just consume them—they step inside. Psychologists call this narrative transportation: when stories leave interpretive gaps, audiences mentally insert themselves, creating deeper engagement and emotional investment. And when people see themselves in a story, they can reshape it, keeping it alive through recontextualization.

Anthropologist Franz Boas saw the same truth at the cultural level: cultures endure not because they are fixed, but because they are constantly reinterpreted. Stories and symbols live on precisely because each generation reshapes them. Think deluge myth or Dracula.

SYLVAIN’s own Edouard N'diaye said it another way in his recent Progress Report: “Fusion isn't a modern disruption. It's culture's natural state.”

Lasting brands can work the same way. Ralph Lauren—once the uniform of prep—was reimagined on Brooklyn streets, where the Lo Lifes, a group of shoplifters, turned Polo into an oversized badge of success in hip hop. In leaving room for participation in their story (obviously not in the shoplifting), Ralph Lauren didn’t lose control of its meaning—it gained longevity and expansion.

The same goes for Converse: cholos, skaters, and members of the punk, grunge, and emo scenes have all claimed the brand as their own—redefining it in the process. As a result, Converse has become a constant across countercultures.

Participation invites magic.

When brands overengineer participation, the results are usually predictable because there’s a target in mind. Leaving space, however, invites the unexpected—the kind of cultural remix that can’t be scripted because it wasn’t even an option. Polo didn’t style their clothes for the Brooklyn streets, and Converse didn’t strategize for lowrider shows, at least at the beginning.

What they both carried was a primal, timeless story that was strong enough to endure, yet open enough to be reimagined by anyone who connected to it. Ralph Lauren’s story is one of aspiration and the American Dream. Converse’s story became one of rebellion.

Participation reveals new meanings.

Brands that leave room for reinterpretation uncover new layers of meaning as culture evolves. In the 1950s, greasers made Converse a symbol of rock ’n’ roll rebellion; in the 80s, skaters infused it with grit; cholos brought street credibility; punks stamped it with political defiance. Yet, through every reinvention, the brand’s core story endured.

Brands that resist reinterpretation, by contrast, fade. Kodak is a classic example. Despite pioneering digital photography, it clung to an outdated story of “capturing moments” on film and prints—ignoring the way people were already redefining photography as instant, mobile, and shareable.

Participation demands conviction.

Openness doesn’t mean passivity. When Dr. Martens’ boots were adopted by neo-Nazi skinheads, the brand stepped in to anchor its story in the multicultural ska movement that first embraced it. A brand can let people reshape its story and still make its stance unmistakable. Participation thrives in openness, but endurance requires conviction.

More and more systems are stepping in to participate for us: writing, recommending, even imagining on our behalf. The opportunity for brands isn’t to over-direct, but to extend an invitation—leaving just enough room for people to shape the story themselves.

About The Writer

Sheila Villalobos is a Senior Strategist based in Richmond, VA. Raised between cultures and shaped by experience across brand and marketing, she’s learned that the most powerful ideas live in between—logic and emotion, brand and performance, progress and imperfection. She’s brought that perspective to work with brands like Converse, Jordan, Andscape, and MasterClass.

About Progress Report

Progress Report is a bi-weekly newsletter of business considerations, cultural conversations, and fun recommendations from around the world and web.