Cowboy hats off. This menswear season, there is a new king of the hill: a designer who has never before topped Vogue Runway’s list of most-viewed menswear shows. Even more extraordinarily, this designer is not a contracted creative director, but the from-scratch founder of his own house. And maybe the most exceptional thing of all? This designer is aged 86.
Ralph Lauren has long preferred menswear presentations over runways. As he once told Style.com’s Dirk Standen: “In menswear, I don’t do a show — I do a whole showing. If you really want to see what I’m about, you can really see the clothes.” That’s why his last menswear runway show was in 2005, and the one before that in 2002, and it’s hard to find much evidence of any other Ralph Lauren menswear runway shows going back to his company’s founding in 1967.
This season, however, Lauren took the decision to combine the twin pillars of Polo and Purple on one runway as a way of acknowledging the “Rolling Thunder” of cultural momentum his brand is currently enjoying. I hope the reaction of Vogue Runway’s readership plays some small part in his thinking as he considers whether to stick with the format. We can always come back for a resee.
Lauren’s ascendancy is the biggest shift in a top 10 that features some other notable changes. Of the four new entries this season, three were on the Milan schedule, meaning that, for the first time in forever, there is a 50-50 split between shows on the Italian and French menswear calendars. Had Yves Saint Laurent not chosen to show its menswear during the couture shows, however, it almost certainly would have made this list. But then, it would have nudged into 11th place another French-showing label: Ryota Iwai’s Auralee, which cracked the top 10 for the first time. The other new entries are DSquared2 (which featured a hot celebrity) and Dolce & Gabbana (which generated heated controversy for its model casting). These Milanese arrivals edged Hermès, where Véronique Nichanian presented her final collection after 37 years, down to 7th in the list.
Here is that list in full.
10. Auralee, rank last season: new entry
7. Hermès, rank last season: 10
6. DSquared2, rank last season: new entry
5. Dolce & Gabbana, rank last season: new entry
3. Prada, rank last season: 3
2. Dior Men, rank last season: 1
1. Ralph Lauren, rank last season: new entry
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