I’m not usually one for doing what TikTok tells me to (my feed is entirely giant packs of small, crusty white dogs and lesbians doing home reno, yet my bathroom floor remains un-retiled and my personal total of small, crusty white dogs is capped at one), but when I started getting served videos about the wonder and elegance of a Ralph Lauren Christmas, I couldn’t help being intrigued. Could I—a certified homemaking disaster who couldn’t even mull Meghan Markle-style holiday wine right—pull off the elegant silver and gold bows, tartan wrapping paper, and deep reds and greens necessary to call my brand-new studio apartment RL-worthy?
TikTok content
TikTok content
My apartment is only 400 square feet, but I’m currently relishing the fact that it’s all mine. I’ve never lived alone in a city I love before (no offense to Austin…it’s just that I only had two friends in town!), and now that I’m single, it seemed like high time to invite a couple of friends over—mostly because that’s about as many people as I can cram into my place—and attempt to present them with a resplendent holiday tableau.
However! In an effort to evade the overconsumption so pervasive this time of year, I decided to make my Ralph Lauren Christmas plans as hard for myself as possible by using only items I already owned or could borrow, which…didn’t work, honestly. My duvet cover is a deep shade of plum that I normally love, but set against the Ralph-red fabrics lighting up TikToks, it looked less than seasonal, so I quickly ran over to a neighboring friend’s house to borrow her only scarlet home item: a crimson fuzzy blanket adorned with pandas. Hey, pandas are bears and so are polar bears, right? There you go! Winter!
I ran into a similar problem when it came to sourcing the bows that are ubiquitous in any proper Ralph Lauren Christmas. TikTok dictates that the bows should be red, but, failing coquette that I am, I only own one giant hair bow, and it’s bright pink. I briefly thought about dyeing it with red food coloring, decided that was insane, and proclaimed it good enough, clipping it to my tiny tabletop tree and trying to ignore the weird Barbie Dream House effect of the pink against my purple bedspread.
Finally, I scoured my entire apartment looking for something plaid, only to come up with…a pair of sweatpants. (Festive!) Undaunted, I folded them up until they reasonably approximated a table runner and draped them over my dining table, thanking God that at least they were clean. With that, my Ralph Lauren Christmas decor was complete, leaving me to ponder what, exactly, a true Ralphian hostess would serve for Christmas dinner. Most likely, it would involve goose or pheasant or duck or some other noble animal, all trussed and roasted and served on the proverbial silver platter to my mishpochah of guests (never forget that Ralph Lauren himself, like me, is Jewish!). But because I have neither a silver platter nor the desire to learn how to cook a baroque bird-centric feast, I ordered pizza and called it an evening.
Ultimately, I guess you could call my attempt at engineering a Ralph Lauren Christmas…a flop. My table setting was a mess (paper plates, the horror!), my food was cheap (but cheerful!), my trimmings and bows were lacking, my mini-tree’s lights summarily gave up and stopped blinking halfway through dinner, and my guests and I mostly yelled profane jokes over each other instead of discussing our upcoming Yuletide trips to Barbados in dulcet tones. Still, I’m grateful to Ralph Lauren—and the concept of a Ralph Lauren Christmas—for giving me an excuse to gather people in my new home. After all, isn’t a messy, loud, greasy-food-filled indoor hang what the holidays are all about?
