Back in the spring of 1972, the United States found itself with an unpopular president, anti-war protests across campuses and an energy crisis. Plus ça change.
It wasn’t all bad… in a studio in the garment district of Manhattan, a young designer staged his first fashion show for a tiny group of fashion editors.
“I hate fashion,” Ralph Lauren told me when I interviewed him in 2019. “I never thought of myself as a fashion designer. It was more about timeless things I liked… and values”.
Fifty-two years on, the 85-year-old Lauren is proving his point about timelessness by recreating that moment, albeit in a different design studio, further uptown in a smarter neighbourhood, at 650 Madison Avenue. It was quite a thrill to be there. Lauren is still sufficiently spritely to (almost) waltz down the catwalk after his show with his wife of 50 years, Ricky Lauren. But for how much longer? Calvin Klein and Donna Karen, the other two megastars who exploded onto the New York fashion scene around the same time as Lauren, have long since retired.
There couldn’t have been more than 100 people in the audience, including Jessica Chastain, Rebecca Hall and Glenn Close, the latter wearing killer silver platforms and an ivory Ralph Lauren tuxedo suit constellated with Swarovski crystals that she first debuted in 2019 at the SAG awards. “Just as stunning now as it was then,” she posted on Instagram.
Why was he showing now, one week before the Met Ball, two months after New York Fashion Week, a jamboree in which he only occasionally takes part these days? Because, with a personal worth of over $8 billion, he can. And he wants to remind everyone of his start, all those years ago, and the fact that what he did then – classic masculine tailoring, mixed with silky, slinky, 30s inspired silhouettes, layered under cable knits, and sometimes accessorised with metal tipped cowboy boots – still works today.
And that’s exactly what he put in this winter/holiday (as in Thanksgiving and the Christmas period) collection. Christy Turlington opened the show in a single breasted oyster-coloured cashmere coat, with matching trousers and a tonal shirt, tie and bag. Soft taupe-y colours morphed into muted golds – one of his favorite colours for evening.
Silk satin bias-cut skirts and beaded sheath dresses, Navajo cardigans, patchwork blazers and leather trousers, pencil skirts with elegant court shoes, pinstripe trousers suits… These were tossed together, seemingly effortlessly, and minus the logs and crests he sometimes can’t resist. Long story short: they’re as relevant now as when his clothes were seen for the first time by the public at large in 1977’s Annie Hall.
After a rocky period a few years ago, the company is on a roll. Revenue last year rose to $6.4 billion as it gradually pivots its business model away from discounted Polo shirts. Preppy is back, appreciated by a new – and not just white – generation.
Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for Ralph Lauren. It may be ersatz, but it’s heartfelt and articulates Lauren’s own misty-eyed belief in the best of America, the one not blighted by opioid crises, inequality and alienating politics. Watching those sun-kissed models float down the runway in Lauren’s mock baronial, wood-panelled offices to the Billy Joel soundtrack Just the Way You Are was to be transported for a few minutes to the New York of fables.
More from the show
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