“Rolling Thunder” is the codename Ralph Lauren and his senior cohort of colleagues have applied to an extremely welcome recent phenomenon: the steadily building wave of fresh interest in Lauren’s already widely loved fashion lexicon. “We’re really proud about that,” said John Wrazej, Lauren’s senior brand creative director of men’s Polo, RLX, Purple Label, and children’s Polo.
Heeding that thunder was the reason Lauren sent Wrazej and a crack RL team to Milan today to present only the house’s third menswear runway show this century. Wrazej said Lauren had been galvanized “to remind people about the strength of Ralph Lauren’s diversity in all those types of men that he services.” To best showcase that breadth, Wrazej further reported, Lauren took the unusual step of showing collections from two labels on one runway. “He wanted to present Polo and Purple Label together to show from the youngest attitude to the most sophisticated.”
That adjacency was both contrasting and complementary: you could see how the collections lived alongside each other, but the distance between them too. Polo, at least at first look, seemed much bubblier, various, and volatile—a true reflection of the natural jackdaw eclecticism that menswear-heads tend to exhibit while still young enough to be conducting radical experiments with their identities.
We saw gorpcore fleeces with folk patterns, fair isles, hand-painted washed denim, leaf-print and duck cotton workwear pants, and duck shoes. Re-issued vintage Polo Sport rugby shirts were followed by knit rugby shirts with purposefully anachronistic gothic font lettering. A fascinatingly recut remix of the lodestone mid-century navy blazer and gray flannel Ivy uniform—seasoned with bengal stripe shirt and wide paisley tie—was menswear lore relegislated for a new generational corps. A hand beaded, fringe-edged western jacket in buckskin-colored suede was accessorized with an authentically battered guitar. The “delicious trousers” in swaggering evening looks cut from what resembled Black Watch tartan were fringed at the side-seam to display their material provenance, Wrazej specified, as being cut from proper kilt fabrics. Tailoring was typically cut in a carefully baggy silhouette: the Hayworth, meant to echo the inclination Lauren’s team had observed that young collectors of the brand’s vintage pieces were trying to achieve. This Polo collection was as richly and variously mixed as the pattern of patchworked vintage tartans on a finely assembled barn jacket.
Purple, at least at first look, appeared deeper but also more still. There was an opening fugue of double-faced camel cashmere worn as multiple deconstructed garments against gray flannel and cable knit. A careful movement of charcoal and gray suiting expertly moved across multiple sartorial dialects. We moved into a gentleman adventurer section whose many highlights included a cream shearling utility parka and a tuxedo-black airman’s jumpsuit worn over an evening shirt and tie that came cinched with a hand-tooled western wear belt. Tyson Beckford’s closing look contrasted a cashmere sherpa coat over an evening suit on a mountain boot base: Lauren was showing us that his Purple Label man is, when he chooses, just as willing to assume multiple simultaneous worn personalities as his Polo youth.
The only thing missing from this show was Lauren himself, who remained in New York to prepare for his upcoming womenswear show. Of this one, he said in his notes, the collections: “are inspired by the different ways men live, their individuality and personal style. From Purple Label’s effortless elegance to Polo’s reimagined preppy spirit, they stand for the worlds I have believed in and lived.” Ralph’s Rolling Thunder boomed beautifully through Milan this evening.
