On the far southern fork of Long Island, past East Hampton and Sagaponack and somewhere in the shadow of Gatsby’s West Egg, there is a place that could be termed Ralph Hampton: the Hamptons of the designer Ralph Lauren’s mind.
Ralph Hampton is a place of verdant fields and blue skies, of horse farms and Aston Martins and old-fashioneds. In Ralph Hampton all sharp edges have been sanded, all teeth gleam, and even the distressed jeans come in silk and are embedded with sparkle. It is an awfully alluring place to spend an hour or two — if also one that is increasingly removed from reality.
Or so it seemed on the eve of New York Fashion Week, when Lauren conjured up his fantasy getaway at Khalily Stables (officially in Bridgehampton) and invited 250 guests to make the multihour journey eastward from New York City.
Jill Biden, the first lady, who had worn a Ralph Lauren dress at the Democratic National Convention, arrived wearing (of course) Ralph Lauren. So did Jude Law, Usher, Naomi Watts and Colman Domingo. Guests, including journalists, were ferried by helicopter, seaplane, black SUV and jitney. The excuse was a fashion show, but the point was the escape.
“They told me I’m the only one who drove myself!” stylist Elizabeth Saltzman, who spent the summer up the road, chortled, as white-jacketed waiters passed mini pastrami sandwiches and lobster rolls, influencers took selfies with tooled leather saddles, and horses poked their noses out of their stalls.
What does one wear in such a world? At 84, Lauren has built an empire on the answer, and for the past few years he has been building his fashion shows to speak to different dimensions of the life that has afforded him, like a streaming series where every season is a new episode in a new location. He has held shows among his collection of classic cars in Connecticut and in his Madison Avenue office; reproduced his Colorado ranch and his Manhattan living room.
Ralph Hampton (Lauren has a home in Montauk) was merely the latest, most extreme iteration: more than 100 looks from his Purple Label and Polo lines; a sea of crochet and linen, denim, tuxedos and American flags.
A strapless dress in watery blues was covered in sequins so it shimmered like the sun on the bay. A ribbed white tank top was paired with a long gold skirt embroidered in gold bullion. A navy silk bathrobe was tossed on over a suit. There were stripes on stripes on stripes and nods to the Yankees and the Olympics (Lauren is the official outfitter of Team USA for the opening and closing ceremonies), all of it worn by a multigenerational cast, including some baby models who looked as if they were on the runway for the first time. Christy Turlington Burns walked, as did her daughter, Grace Burns, and her nephew, James Turlington.
At the end, Lauren took his bow in a motocross jacket from his Olympic kit, which had been inspired by his own driving fits, and guests were ushered through the backstage door and into an upscaled reproduction of the Polo Bar, Lauren’s New York restaurant, complete with silver Champagne bowls, walls in billiard table green and the real maitre’d, who had been imported for the evening.
“I thought fashion had gotten boring,” Lauren said, ensconced in his corner table next to his wife, Ricky, and Biden. “But I had more to share.” Hence the welcome-to-my-world nature of the event.
It was an exercise of imagination and power mind-bogglingly rendered, but also kind of absurd — asking everyone to travel hours back and forth to see a show and eat in a fake version of an actual restaurant that exists ... back where many of them started. The problem is, at a time when the stakes of the outside world feel increasingly urgent, and the question is how to dress for the moment, ultimately what that served was not burgers and local wines, but disconnection. —NYT
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