Inside New York's story-studios - Telegraph Lisa Armstrong: 'Depending on which designer you're meeting, you might step out of the elevator into a soothing blur of Zen-like minimalism, East Coast chintz or a replica of a wood-panelled gentleman's club in St James's, London.' Once upon a time in America there was a poor Jewish boy called Ralph Lipschitz who decided there had to be more to life than selling ties and being stuck with a comedy name. He eventually parlayed the ties into a multi-billion dollar business that included home-ware, red-carpet dresses and the ubiquitous polo shirt. And he upgraded the name to Lauren. His son recently married a former president's niece. READ: Lauren Bush: the girl who wants to FEED the world This is classic American Dream territory, but it's also about American storytelling - or to put it more baldly, marketing. It can't be coincidence that the billboards in America are ginormous, as much a part of a city such as New York's sense of identity as its yellow taxis. Lauren's brilliant invention, the one he sold to America and then to the rest of the planet, was a world of Wasp-y elegance, patrician outdoorsy sports and inherited (mostly from England) good taste. His genius was to convince everyone they could enjoy these benedictions. Since Ralph, there have been other American designers with a flare for fable weaving, notably Tommy Hilfiger, who came along in the late Eighties and conjured up a universe of preppies, which he, too, exported - to the tune of billions. To some eyes, the kilts and the stripey blazers with their faux crests are hilariously ersatz, but for many more they're an enjoyable aspiration. Tommy Hilfiger spring/summer 2013 PHOTO: Vladimir Potop I was reminded of this gift for re-invention this week in New York when, between shows, I visited a few of the designers in their studios. Carolina Herrera, the fabulously elegant 73-year-old Venezuelan who made New York her home in 1981 and has since built a billion-dollar business, inhabits a nondescript skyscraper in the Garment District. It's a building where Calvin Klein and numerous others have lodged, and each floor is a manifestation of their particular creed. Depending on which designer you're meeting, you might step out of the elevator into a soothing blur of Zen-like minimalism, East Coast chintz or a replica of a wood-panelled gentleman's club in St James's, London. Herrera's HQ is huge and her corner office offers a plush, cosseting slice of the Upper East Side, with a musky undertow of Studio 54 glamour, as befits the queen of worldly style: thick, ankle-grazing blonde carpets, silk upholstered sofas, a zebra-patterned table weighted with silver-framed family photographs and, looming over it all, the portrait Warhol did of her in the early Eighties These, Herrera was at pains to tell me apologetically, were temporary quarters. We're having our old ones upstairs renovated. We'll be opening out on to the terraces. It will be much more glamorous. READ: Making a killing with Malene's style You'd never get these magpie interiors in Britain. No one in Britain, except perhaps a Russian oligarch not yet accustomed to our ways, would deck out a mid-20th-century interior like a French farmhouse or a Buddhist temple. It would be deemed inauthentic and maybe - if the external architecture was especially bland - a touch presumptuous or even, God forbid, pretentious. Not so in America. "You have to create a narrative for your brand here," the British Deborah Lloyd of Kate Spade told me, as we perched on a fuchsia velvet sofa in her turquoise office, with its statement wall of Florence Broadhurst wallpaper, in another unimposing mid-town block. Unless you give your brand a back story, it's just stuff. People want something to identify with - an idea, a personality. No doubt about it, storytelling is a powerful drug. Look what Danny Boyle's did for national morale and consciousness-raising. On a crass commercial level, it turns consumerism, with all its negative connotations, into something slightly less crass: an expression of a certain kind of consistent taste. Yet even though the British story is a No 1 best-seller around the world (hence Belstaff, a company no longer owned or manufactured by Brits and not even showing here, has Belstaff England printed on its labels), our designers who, ounce for ounce, are 10 times more creative than most of their New York counterparts, don't do nearly enough of the story. With the exception of Burberry, who yammer home the British angle at every opportunity, we've left our borders wide open for the likes of Tommy, Ralph and co to cherry pick the best and sell it back to us. Good luck to them. They gave birth to lots of lovely little cash dividends and have lived happily after. Now it's time for UK design talent to do the same. Read more of Lisa Armstrong's columns