Ralph Lauren to help modernize Paris art school

American fashion designer Ralph Lauren is set to come to the rescue of the famous art school, the École des Beaux-Arts, with a multi-million dollar gift to help restore the site in Paris’s Latin Quarter. 

Acccording to WWD, funds have been set aside for major updates to the school’s main auditorium, which features a 90-foot (27-meter) mural by French painter Paul Delaroche, as well as modernizing the website with updated e-learning and online content. 

The designer, who usually presents his collections during the Mercedes-Benz fashion week in New York City, is also rumored to be preparing a runway show for October 8. The gala show and dinner, set to take place just after the Paris Spring-Summer 2014 presentations, would mark Lauren’s first ever European show.

This isn’t the designer’s first act of artistic benevolence. Back in 1998 Lauren gave $13 million to the Smithsonian Institution to preserve the famous ‘star-spangled banner’, the now 200-year-old flag which inspired the US national anthem. 

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