The CFDA announced its nominations for the 2025 Fashion Awards today. It was excellent timing for Ralph Lauren. The designer, who’s nearing his 60th year in business, was nominated for the womenswear award. Lauren has won nine times before, and been nominated even more. A tenth award would be some kind of record—this is an industry obsessed with newness, after all.
It could be that the CFDA voters have clocked all the younger designers lifting from Lauren’s 1980s playbook, or maybe they just recognized that the designer is coming off of one of his most vital and relevant shows in years. Longevity is one thing; relevance, as we all know, is harder to maintain.
Following his standout “Modern Romantics” show at the Jack Shainman Gallery in April, we were back in Lauren’s Madison Avenue headquarters. The walls had been lined with deep cushioned benches stacked with pillows—the very height of luxury in a week better known for metal bleachers. Laura Dern, Naomi Watts, and Jessica Chastain all sat near the entrance, a kind of glamorous welcoming committee, and down the front row, Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King joined Lauren’s family.
The designer swapped fall’s sumptuous ruffles and velvets for clothes with a breezy crispness in a strict palette of red, white, and black. Like his previous outing, this one toggled between masculine and feminine touches; “strength and sensuality,” is how he put it in his show notes, but he wasn’t averse to mixing metaphors. Many of the tailored looks were accompanied by bandeaus in place of shirts, and he cut trousers with the wrap-like waists of a sarongs.
Deeply brimmed straw hats, cabana stripes, and silver shell pendants on silk cords gave the proceedings a seaside feeling, a quality that continued into evening with long slips that dipped to the low, low back. Other dresses had the sparkle and shine of a night on the town. The overall impression was concise, minimal, and possibly even a tad restrained, but it was all just as resolutely Ralph as the frills and flounces of last season.
At the CFDA’s fashion week kickoff party 10 blocks south in Rockefeller Center, Ashlynn Park, a nominee in the Awards’ emerging category, shared her perspective on being in Lauren’s company. “An incredible American dream,” she called it. Soaking up the standing ovation after his show, Lauren looked like he might be feeling something similar.
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