Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger return to the American wardrobe and discover that nostalgia looks better when it refuses to behave.
American fashion has always been an exercise in mythology. The polished ease of the country club, the romance of a road trip, the white shirt, the navy blazer and the faded jean. But mythology, like fashion itself, becomes interesting only when someone decides to disturb it.
For Spring/Summer 2027, Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger did precisely that.
On September 9th at Jack Shainman Gallery in Tribeca, Ralph Lauren presented an “irreverent take on romance”, a collection that felt less like a celebration of his archive than a conversation with it.
The mood was sensual, but never precious. Navy and white established the palette, allowing the silhouettes and their deliberate imperfections to speak. Slim jackets met low-slung, voluminous trousers. A revival of the first women’s suit Lauren designed appeared alongside golden fringed gowns worn over navy trousers; distressed denim was elevated with feathered details; seersucker tailoring appeared intentionally torn, as though perfection itself had become outdated.
Then there were the quieter luxuries, hand-painted finishes on silk lamé, burnout velvet, embroidered surfaces and dulled sequins. These were clothes with texture and memory, garments that seemed to have lived a life before arriving on the runway.
Presented in the presence of Ricky Lauren, Ralph’s wife and longtime muse, romance here wasn’t the saccharine kind. It was personal. A little undone. A little defiant.
If Lauren looked inward, Tommy Hilfiger looked outward, to the next generation.
The Plaza Hotel became Hilfiger’s playground on September 10th, where the designer returned to New York Fashion Week with a collection built around “Plaza Prep”. Gigi Hadid opened the show in a blazer, T-shirt and oversized trousers, immediately signaling that this was prep with its collar loosened.
Oversized polos, extended proportions, plaid bucket hats and flashes of bright color took the familiar Hilfiger vocabulary and turned up its volume. The red, white and navy remained but the attitude was different: less collegiate handbook, more downtown remix.
And perhaps that’s the most compelling distinction between the two collections.
Lauren understands heritage as something intimate, a wardrobe of memories that becomes more beautiful when it acquires a few scratches. Hilfiger treats heritage as cultural currency, something to hand to a younger generation and let them spend it differently.
Neither designer is interested in pretending the past didn’t happen.
They simply refuse to wear it exactly as they found it.
In Lauren’s world, romance is distressed, feathered and beautifully imperfect. At Hilfiger, prep has grown oversized, louder, and younger.
Two visions of America, then but neither particularly nostalgic.
Perhaps the most American thing fashion can do is take an old idea, make it personal and insist that it belongs to you now.