Season after season, Ralph Lauren’s show message emphasizes personal style. There’s a touch of irony in the fact that the designer behind one of American fashion’s most recognized status symbols, the Polo pony, is such an ardent proponent of doing it your own way—of tripping up the algorithm, you could say—but so be it. A man’s contradictions make him more interesting.
Stylish contradictions were very much in play in this spring show. Lauren himself has been known to wear a tuxedo jacket with a pair of Levi’s faded just so. Here, he mixed a colorful brocade jacket with white cargo pants and a feather bedecked velvet jacket in shrunken proportions with dark rinse boyfriend jeans. Alongside this blending of the rugged and refined, as outlined in the show notes, there were fashionable anachronisms in the form of the V-point corset worn with simple chinos that opened the show and a pinstripe waistcoat, like something out of The Gilded Age, with dramatic tails that extended to the floor, which came a few looks later. The super-wide tie worn with a matching blue shirt and super faded jeans was a callback to his own notable history: the four-inch wide ties that launched his career in 1967.
As exuberant as these pieces were, this was equally a collection of more straightforward tailoring and dresses, usually in head-to-toe white, camel, or navy, and often in what appeared to be crisp cottons. A pair of Made in Italy pantsuits showcased a discerning eye for cut and structure.
Nearly 60 years in, Lauren has covered a lot of sartorial ground, and claimed much of it as his own, and as he approaches that milestone anniversary, there must be an urge to take the full measure of his work. That said, he was at his best here when he was indulging more romantic instincts. The silks and lamés that were hand-painted or burned out to achieve an aged patina, the burnished gold bead dress with an ombré effect, the tech organzas that looked sun bleached or tie-dyed—all of them with a “touched by the hand” quality that feels rare and precious in an increasingly AI-ified world.