Who is the Ralph Lauren woman? The version on display at the American brand’s Autumn 2025 fashion show on Thursday in New York was elegant, swapping denim jeans and button-downs for Victorian-era frills.
She’s also a significant business opportunity for Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet, who says that while women are more than half of the brand’s shoppers, its womenswear business is only one-third of company sales. With each runway show — which take place on Ralph’s schedule, not the fashion calendar’s — Ralph Lauren chooses a focal point. Sometimes — like its September show at a riding stable in the Hamptons — the show is fully immersive into the Ralph Lauren world, with men’s, women’s and kidswear on display and sets designed in the style of its homeware. This show featured only womenswear against the backdrop of a clean, marble-floored Art Deco gallery space (a minimal set up compared to the Hamptons voyage).
“It felt like this was a good time to put more emphasis on women’s,” says Louvet, with a reminder that each show starts with Lauren’s vision and the story he wants to tell. He’s the director; the show is his cinema, as Louvet likes to remind us. “So there’s a big opportunity there, and we’re seeing really good consumer response across the board to our overall women’s portfolio. We’re excited about the momentum, and looking at today as a way to add even more fuel to that.”
The American fashion brand has had several lives. For its next one, it’s working on reestablishing itself as a leading global luxury brand. CEO and president Patrice Louvet explains the strategy during the Vogue Business Executive Summit.
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Louvet says the runway collection is designed to hook existing and new customers who may see the floor-length gowns on the runway on social media before going to a store to buy a belt or pair of jeans. Like its menswear, its womenswear is a contradiction between “the rugged and refined”, Louvet says.
Women’s apparel, handbags and outerwear sales were up 20 per cent in the third quarter, which the brand reported in early February. Handbags, particularly, are a point of investment for the brand, and a considerable entry point for consumers in Asia, Louvet notes. The brand hired a new team of handbag designers a few years ago to relaunch the category, introducing the Polo ID in 2022 and adding styles like Polo Play (launched two months ago) and updating its longstanding Ricky bag. “I’m excited about this category, it’s strategic for us,” Louvet says.
Overall, Ralph Lauren sales rose 11 per cent in the third quarter, beating analyst estimates and reporting better-than-expected holiday sales across all regions. It was a strong showing for Ralph Lauren during a luxury-wide slump. Highlights were the direct-to-consumer channel (sales rose 12 per cent) and China — a sticking point for other brands, but where sales were up more than 20 per cent for Ralph Lauren. Asia is the brand’s third biggest market after North America and Europe, and it has been bullish to grow its business there, opening stores (it reclaimed its brand back from a series of licensing agreements in recent years) and hosting a re-see of its Spring/Summer 2025 collection in Shanghai on 2 April. Deteriorating US-China relations be damned.
How is Louvet navigating such a turbulent global landscape? He declined to say whether or not the brand would have to increase its prices (which Hermès announced earlier that day) or invest further in US production, but notes that it diversified its manufacturing away from China in the last several years, which has “served us well”. The brand primarily manufactures in Cambodia, Vietnam, Italy, Switzerland and the US, as well as China. He says that the strategy otherwise hasn’t changed, and that diversified growth across regions, product categories and supply chain is its competitive advantage.
“Uncertainty is going to be characteristic of our generation, not just this year or next year,” Louvet says. “In that context, what’s important in our industry and for us is clarity on who we are and staying true to that. A lot of brands lost sight of who they were, and are struggling with defining that in consumers’ minds.” He says that the company’s focus will be on what it can control. “It’s not time to retrench — our mindset is this is the time to gain even more market share.”
Louvet says marketing spend has increased year over year, and it’s forging ahead with its planned sports partnerships and celebrity dressing moments. “It’s about value perception. We put a lot of emphasis on that.”
Still, no one brand is immune to a growing geopolitical showdown that is all anyone in fashion can seem to think about. Post-show, Louvet laughed off another guest’s acknowledgement of the T-word — tariffs — proving even the fantasy created by Lauren is not shielded from the outside world. It’s an interesting time to be an American brand with big business in China, to say the least, and maybe a timely blessing that this collection didn’t play up the brand’s Americana roots. That seems to be the point, as Louvet does a bit of distancing.
“We don’t view ourselves as an American brand. I like to think of us as a global company with American roots. If you look at the values that characterise the company — authenticity, timelessness, sense of possibility — those are global values. Global values rooted in American history.”
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