Ralph Lauren couldn't have chosen a more fitting backdrop to stage his Spring 2027 collection. With its soaring white marble columns, nearly 30-foot gilded coffered ceilings, and enormous arched windows, 108 Leonard was built at the end of the 19th century as the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company. The Italian Renaissance Revival landmark—better known as the Clock Tower Building—was designed to project a feeling of permanence. More than a century later, its landmarked bones are still there, but the building has been restored and reimagined for a modern New York.
The Ralph Lauren brand turns 60 next year, and the metaphor was hard to miss.
Few designers have built a universe as enduring as Lauren has since he started selling ties in 1967. We know and love the Ralph Lauren woman. She rides horses. She borrows from the boys. She wears faded denim with a formal overcoat and can make a crisp white shirt feel like an entire look. At night, she changes into a gown. The remarkable thing, nearly six decades later, is how Lauren keeps finding new sides to her without turning her into somebody else. And for Spring 2027, it's clear she's ready to let her hair down.
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Getty“Spring 2027 is an irreverent take on romance that creates a new elegance,” Lauren wrote in his show notes. “It’s about ways of dressing that celebrate ingenuity, originality, and character—the freedom and fun of creating a style that is truly personal.”
That freedom he references was evident from the first look. An all-white ensemble initially read as quintessential Ralph: wide-legged trousers and clean lines, until you got to the top—a corseted silk brocade number with a plunging V-shaped waist and sleeves hitting just below the elbow. But then things started loosening.
The second look featured low-slung navy trousers and a classic white vest topped with a breezy white jacket trimmed by shaggy shearling. Throughout the collection, that same slightly bohemian, Penny Lane-esque streak kept appearing: distressed jeans with cropped shearling jackets, shrunken brocade and velvet, flashes of fringe and feathers (on the shoes, no less!). Bohemianism is hardly foreign territory for Lauren—last fall, this same room was filled with ruffled jabots, velvet tailoring and riding jackets—but today, the romance felt injected with something a little more rebellious.
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GettyEven the styling seemed to suggest this Ralph woman had dressed herself with a new attitude. Long fringed and silk scarves alike were knotted around the hips instead of the neck, floral brooches were jauntily fastened on jacket lapels, and a wide blue necktie—a wink to where Lauren's career began—was worn with a matching brocade shirt and washed denim.
My favorite look was a gold, sequin-trimmed fringed scarf-top wrapped around the body, dipping low at the waist and slinked over the shoulders, with a pair of languid navy trousers underneath. It was sensual without trying hard to be, something Lauren has always had a knack for (who can forget his Spring 2024 collection, where he turned silk foulards into halter tops and sarongs?). It was easy to picture the Ralph girl who had just finished her ride for the day, wrapping something shimmery around herself and deciding to go dancing in it.
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GettyThis season, the RL team used a process called "spritz and tumble" to deliberately rumple up dresses and skirts. All of it conveyed a feeling of movement, like the Ralph Lauren woman was either ready for or had just come back from a party. Even fabrics associated with eveningwear looked like they had been danced in, sat in, rolled around in.
The eveningwear was a standout. A fluid wrap dress was engineered with a single seam; a golden floor-length skirt drifted down the runway like molten lava. The most attention-getting look of the collection had to be the voluminous cobalt-blue skirt paired with a matching shirt, unbuttoned almost to the belly-button. As the model walked, the skirt caught the air and billowed around her like a cloud.
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GettyLauren is a master of his own distinct codes—Western references and aristocratic tailoring, masculine and feminine, eveningwear and workwear, the ranch and Fifth Avenue. His show notes call it a dialogue between the “rugged and refined.”
At 108 Leonard, the bones of the original building are the same, even after its outward transformation. For Spring 2027, it's clear Lauren understands the same thing about his own brand: you don’t have to change everything to make something feel new.