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San Marino, California – Like many designers, Ralph Lauren is a cinephile, his vision for the brand is theatrical: with an endless series of films. But he’s East Coast by heart, and until Thursday night he’d never performed a set in Los Angeles. In what felt like the final resting place of Hollywood’s A-list – longtime in-house muse Diane Keaton, Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, Sylvester Stallone and others – sat next to Tik Tok influencers and top customers in the moonlight front row. The brand’s latest runway proposal: a 120-plus-look fantasy featuring products from several Ralph Lauren collections, including the traditional runway line, Double RL (rustic, upscale denim and workwear), polo for men and women, purple menswear and kidswear.
Nestled in a beautiful, sleepy neighborhood south of Pasadena and east of Los Angeles, the stunning Gardens on Huntington, a few years ago, sister designers Rodarte – who live nearby – put together a collection in the same location. Lauren’s team took advantage of the marble museum building’s stone-paved entrance to showcase the brand’s full world, California Songs out the speakers. (Lauren takes the bow to Neil Diamond’s “I Am… I Said”: “Well I’m New York City born and raised / But now I’m lost between two coasts.”)
Ralph Lauren, the company, has spent the last five or so years trying to make its more expensive products more attractive and its less expensive products worthy of full price. What makes Ralph Lauren special is that the everyday items – the polo, the pillow sham – are still fun, succeeding at the runway shows.
This season, typical cowgirl floral dresses, airbrushed-sleeve denim and a pair of crisp whites—even a refined prism of those multi-sport looks—were given the perfect backdrop: a clean marble building against the lush, but also pure, green. (Always polished, no matter the terrain.) While the style was traditional, a few nylon balls at the end gave the gown a dramatic wrinkle.
Like many fashion brands, the US has become an engine of growth for Ralph Lauren during these strange pandemic times. But unlike some of its European peers, the company doesn’t know how much opportunity it has left, particularly in the Southwest and West Coast compared to the East Coast and Deep South. (There are still long-term benefits as fashion spending in the U.S. declines.) Patrice Louvet, the brand’s CEO, spent the week before the show visiting major cities Seattle and San Francisco to get a sense of what’s going on. The next phase of Ralph Lauren’s retail expansion in the area should look like it. At the show in Los Angeles, where the company operates several stores, each with a different purpose, serving a specific customer – on Rodeo Drive and in Century City, at Saks but also at Macy’s – Ralph Lauren hosted major customers. Buying everything from Purple Label to Double RL. They put them up at the Waldorf Astoria in Beverly Hills, then took them out on the show. A perfect Hollywood ending.
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