Inside Ralph Lauren’s Glamorous Hamptons Fashion Blowout

This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the global fashion week circuit. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.

At golden hour in the Hamptons, Jude Law was deep in conversation with First Lady Jill Biden as Usher, draped in lemony linen, scooted past them to watch a group of equestrians lope around a primly manicured field. Elsewhere around the Water Mill horse stables that served as the venue for Thursday evening’s Ralph Lauren spring-summer 2025 runway show, the swimmer Bobby Finke took selfie after selfie with other guests—he was, by my count, the first fashion week attendee of the season to accessorize his look with an Olympic gold medal.

For a world builder par excellence like Ralph Lauren, no detail escapes his touch: his vintage automobiles were parked around the grounds, and the equestrian riders, of course, wore crisp white Polo shirts. The post-show dinner was held in a replica of New York’s Polo Bar painstakingly constructed in a tent, a process that took five weeks for a one-night-only martini-fueled blowout. “Ralph lives his life at a certain level, and he curates that feeling within the clothes and in the experience,” Usher noted, after posing for a photo with the First Lady.” Plus: “Our birthday is on the same day! October 14. We’re Libras.”

What wasn’t included in Ralph’s airtight vision of Americana last night was a feeling that is often inescapable at New York Fashion Week, which officially starts today: anxiety.

It’s no secret that for years, American fashion has played the role of follower rather than leader. Season after season, the brightest stateside designers flee for Paris at the earliest opportunity, while American menswear labels co-opt soft Italian codes of luxury. NYFW has been shrinking, not growing, as international editors and buyers skip it to extend their summer holidays.

This season, however, feels different. Right now, New York is crawling with international A-list designers. Alaïa and Off-White brought their catwalks from Paris to the Big Apple, and the likes of Jonathan Anderson, Simon Porte Jacquemus, Sacai’s Chitose Abe, newly-installed Uniqlo head Claire Waight Keller, and Zegna’s Alessandro Sartori are in town for events and activations, a tacit acknowledgment that you ignore New York’s cultural clout at your own peril.