Ralph Lauren's front row was a masterclass in how to dress if you're over 70
You can tell the true nature of a fashion designer by the people who wear their clothes - do they look like fashion victims or the best versions of themselves?
This is never truer than when it comes to the front row, where A-listers and influencers are dressed head to toe in the designer’s vision. Is it heavenly or a dystopian pile up of folk who’ve lost all touch with reality?
No one has ever accused Hollywood types of being grounded in normality. Yet the striking thing about the crowd Ralph Lauren drew on Thursday night for his first ever show in California, is how much like themselves they looked (give or take some, ahem, divine cosmetic intervention). There was 76 year old Diane Keaton, sipping cocktails and posing for selfies in a long black frock coat and trousers - and one of her signature quirky pilgrim hats.
A few starry feet away were Sylvester Stallone, also 76, and his wife, the former model Jennifer Flavin, now 54, looking not so different from how they used to 30 years ago when Stallone came a-courting Flavin when she used to walk the catwalks in Paris and Milan. And they said it would never last. They underestimated the couple who dress alike, including matching tans that looked as though they’d been colour graded - Stallone in white jeans and t-shirt and a tan suede jacket and Flavin in a long, toning cappuccino coloured body con jersey dress.
Just across the room were Robin Wright, 56 in a black silk blouse and flared trousers, and her daughter Dylan Penn and 45 year old Jessica Chastain, in a tartan blazer and black trousers chatting to 43 year old Mindy Kalin, the hugely successful producer and actress, who was wearing fuchsia trousers and top.
And gliding as discreetly towards their seats on the terrace as it’s possible to glide when you’re one of America’s most talked about couples were Bennifer, the love smitten recently-weds 53- year-old Jennifer Lopez and 50-year-old Ben Affleck wearing a plunging pinstripe wrap dress and a black suit and black tie (I’ll leave you to work out which one was wearing what).
Personally, I think most of them could have used some more colour in their outfits but it is, thank goodness, a free country and monochrome apart, it was strangely endearing to see them all looking so relaxed. Keaton, one of the original champions of Ralph Lauren (she mixed it in with vintage to create the iconic outfits in Annie Hall) looked positively radiant and happy to be there.
California might be going to the dogs right now, according to just about everyone you talk to there, with a surge in homelessness, crime and corruption in high places, but you would never have guessed it in the extraordinary old world of Pasadena’s Huntington Library. A hundred year old multinational colonnaded house with lush, semi tropical gardens, straight out of The Great Gatsby, the Hungtington, with its impressive collection of Reynolds and Van Eycks and world class library of literary manuscripts, oozes old(ish) money. There couldn’t be a better setting in the whole of the city for Ralph Lauren, who has made billions distilling Old Money tropes for generations of new money.
A few years ago however, the 83 year old Lauren’s olde world lens started to look slightly cracked. The Wasp aesthetic on which so much of Ralph Lauren is based - tweed Duke of Windsor style jackets, knitted tank tops, silk cravates tucked into striped shirts, pleated skirts, cricket jumpers, cream pleat front trousers and waistcoats and toning penny loafers seemed too white and elitist for modern tastes. The company’s revenues headed south.
But for the past couple of years, the direction of travel chez Ralph has changed. New management and company restructure has helped, but the big change is that new generations are falling in love again with Ralph’s brand of elegance (one male Korean influencer with perfect posture sat on the front row in a brown three piece suit looking like an understudy for Clark Gable.).
Ralph, confirms the team at Net-a-Porter.com, is having a moment. It’s part of a whole preppie revival, partly sparked by all those little pleated mini skirts, patterned knits and blazers worn in Emily in Paris. By pure coincidence (not) Lily Collins, the star of monster hit, was at the show too, wearing a strapless, Audrey Hepburn style black satin dress, also by Ralph Lauren, obviously.
It’s not just the clothes that are back. In Manhattan, 80 year old piano bars such as Bemelmans (named for the author of the children’s books Madeline) now have queues round the block. Cosy chintz and big squashy sofas are replacing industrial chic and cocktails like Old Fashioneds (in abundance on Thursday evening) are the order of the night. This time though, the fans come from a broader more ethnically diverse demographic.
And who better to service it all than the grand master of Preppiedom, Ralph Lauren? If you like the classics, this show was indeed sartorial heaven, from the tips of the models’ brogues, to the collars of their floppy shirts and the pearls of their caps all of it in shades of cream and sand. Looking for a nubbly linen blazer with a difference? His were pleated and banded at the back - very Jay Gatsby.
But Ralph Lauren was never about a single aesthetic. In this big ol’ show there were cowboy hats and denim dungarees, intarsia knits, slim lace prairie dresses and surf bros’ (and sisters’) sporty bright duvet jackets and baggy shorts.
Mixing, for the first time, his less expensive lines, RRL, Polo and Polo sport, with the black label collection altogether on the catwalk, this was a complete picture of the world of Ralph Lauren. As the guests - many of them loyal Los Angeles customers - reclined on Ralph Lauren monogrammed linen cushions, sipping their cocktails while a soundtrack that included Neil Diamond and the Great American Songbook crooned in the background, you couldn’t help feeling, that even if only for a few hours, Planet Ralph is a very pleasant place to be.
