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The theme was Ralph Lauren. And the setting for the brand’s spring 2025 collection was a manicured riding stable in Bridgehampton, New York — the sort of idyllic horsey, beachy, farmy place that is a touch too perfect, a just-out-of-reach Americana. No one expects Ralph Lauren to be real — the fantasy is the point.
This time, the suspension of reality was challenged by a four-and-a-half hour afternoon commute from Manhattan for many guests, a number of whom missed the cocktails and barely made it for the 6.30pm show. Time spent in shared rides devolved into comparing vacation photos and sharing iPhone chargers, playing highway games (spot that vanity plate), and generally bonding until arriving, with relief, at Ralph’s cinematic universe.
Once past Ralph’s two vintage roadsters parked at the entrance, the fantasy began by a field in which equestrians circled on horseback. There was Tom Hiddleston and Colman Domingo meandering around Naomi Watts. First Lady Jill Biden, the guest of honour and flanked by her granddaughter Finnegan Biden, chatted to Jude Law. Laura Dern held hands with her daughter. All while the set loomed beyond.
It wasn’t Jay Gatsby. It was Ralph Lauren.
The evening’s main event was held in a large, white colonnaded building erected over the past month on a field at Khalily Stables, under the watchful eyes of neighbours including Loews Hotels CEO Jonathan Tisch and his wife Lizzie, who expressed amazement at the spectacle they’d witnessed. Further on, Ralph had constructed a replica of his panelled, library-like Polo Bar, where burgers and Montauk black sea bass were to be served for dinner.
To unpack all of this extravagance is to attempt to unravel how the designer has come to define American fashion since founding his company in 1967. He has plumbed our nation’s psyche to such depths that much of the world believes we throw Navajo blankets on our sofas and pair blue blazers with white tennis shoes at college.
His shows, stores and media roll out like cinema, which may be why we don’t care that it’s not real nor that it was never a real replica of America. “It’s the American West that Ralph Lauren had never even been to,” says David Lauren, Ralph’s middle son and the company’s chief branding and innovation officer, while in a taxi on the way home from work earlier this week. “It’s about a way of living. There are a lot of characters in Ralph Lauren’s movie. This man, this woman, this child.”
David has been responsible for an uptick in the brand’s social presence as well as a surge in Gen Z interest, which has helped the brand stay firm as the industry faces an overall slowdown. Annual sales have risen in the single digits over the past two years, despite an uneven pandemic rebound in the US, its biggest market, and in China. By Friday morning, fashion influencers including Lívia Marques (871,000 TikTok followers) and Claire Rose (415,000 TikTok) had posted TikTok videos of the glitzy-but-make-it-country event, and the company’s own account had posted moody TikToks that feel like a romance movie promo, with foggy fields and horses running free, manes flying.
More ephemerally, David has become accustomed to translating the magic of his father.
“He’s not just thinking of the cut of the season, he’s thinking of the whole story,” David says.
That story was why they spent untold (they’re not telling) millions of dollars to bring hundreds of guests, models, staff and production teams so far out of Manhattan just one day before the official New York Fashion Week calendar begins.
“It’s not about the Hamptons, just to be clear,” David clarifies. “It’s about the beaches, it’s about horses, it’s about stables, it’s about country living. It’s about Ralph’s Hamptons.”
It’s why for the US team, the Olympics have become Ralph’s Olympics, with athletes looking as though they just came from a game of polo at his mythical estate.
“One company sells fashion, another company sells sex,” David says. “Ralph Lauren sells love. He sells a romantic story about how people want to live.”
David Lauren uses “Ralph Lauren” interchangeably, speaking as a 52-year-old who has spent his adult years translating for his father, and it isn’t always clear whether he’s speaking of the man or the company.
Which was it? Father or brand name, I ask. David hesitates. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Ralph Lauren is an adjective.”
He may be right.
“I’ve grown up watching the shows. Now I see my life,” he continues. “I see where the messages come from. It’s not coming from poof! It’s coming from ideas… I’ll see a sweater coming down the street and I’ll know that sweater was a sofa in my home.”
The collection shown on Thursday hit all the notes: easy beach life in linen and crocheted cotton, collegiate shredded denim and blazers, an easy sequined gown-skirt worn with a white sleeveless undershirt. Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell walked three times, including the finale, bringing that supermodel halo to the production.
But the looks that stood out were a reference to Ralph’s American flag sweaters, which caused a stir when he introduced them in 1989. Those chunky cotton sweaters — with the Stars and Stripes knitted across the chest and an enlarged ‘RL’ in a lower corner — were featured several times on the runway on Thursday evening, paired with white knit shorts and layered under a pinstriped tailored jacket.
New York Fashion Week hasn’t officially begun, so it’s yet to be known whether other designers will reflect the country’s political heat leading up to November’s presidential election — but it was impossible to miss Ralph’s smoke signals.
Democrats have begun taking back American symbols such as the flag on those sweaters, already available in stores. Ralph himself wore a brilliant red, white and blue Olympic jacket emblazoned with a torso-wide ‘U.S.A.’. Dr Biden joined him, demure in a navy blue suit, reminding some of Hillary Clinton’s appearance at the designer’s 50th anniversary show in Central Park in 2018.
Ralph, at 84, has walked more hesitantly and less steadily on his runways in recent years. He stepped out only a few feet this season, waving at his guests, who stood and applauded.
David steers the subject away when I ask about the long-term plans for the company, as his father turns 85 next month.
“He sees his work not as work,” the son says, “but as living.”
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