RUNWAY: Ralph Lauren SS18

While many have abandoned the see-now-buy-now model, such as Tom Ford, Ralph Lauren has not; so during NYFW, Lauren offered up his SS18 collection and it was all about yachting. As one does when you're a Ralph Lauren-ite, who spends their weekend in the Hamptons and takes a private yacht to cruise along St. Barths. That was the jump-off point for this collection and all the hallmarks of a Ralph Lauren collection were here, including effusive colors, masculine tailoring and a strong whiff of WASP-y ignorance, there were even jeans that were bleached to resemble the sky with some clouds. However, the collectionl seemed far too familiar and that could be why Lauren's company has been seeing declining sales and has been forced to layoff a number of employees. The label and the man himself has been static for decades, showing the same aesthetic, tweaked ever so slightly every season but never actually changing and evoking. Think of that episode of The Simpsons when Marge reworked the same Chanel suit over and over again but in the end, it was the same suit. That's Ralph Lauren. The world has changed drastically, especially within the last few years with technology and social media, and much like Xerox or Kodak who were also stalwarts of American industry and seemed "too big to fail", if Lauren doesn't change along with the world, his company might face the same fate as these two.