Few brands have inspired a hunger for collecting like Ralph Lauren. The all-American brand has superfans in every corner of the world who amass stashes of pony-crested polo shirts and duck-billed ball caps.
Ralph Lauren brought together that cohort for the first time this past weekend in Tokyo with PoloFest, an event that was part flea market, part Comic Con, for people who wear 30-year-old Polo Country jeans. The company lassoed together vintage dealers like Japan’s Big Apple Store, New York’s Procell and Canada’s F as in Frank, as well as a pack of influencers and fashion talking heads for panel discussions.
They came dressed in their most braggiest of Polo relics: sweatpants with “P-wing” emblems, lit-professor tweed blazers, boro-stitched jeans and sweaters laden with “RL” insignia. The booths, with their rigged-up mannequins, dark-wood furniture out of Tuxedo Park mansions and rows of folded V-neck sweaters, were as finnicky as any of Lauren’s shops. Only this one lasted just a few days.
Lauren himself, at 87, was not in attendance, but his son David, who has increasingly taken the spotlight at company events, was.
Officially, the occasion was partly to do with the 50th anniversary of Ralph Lauren’s arrival in the Japanese market. Next year will be the 60th anniversary of Lauren’s business overall.
But PoloFest syncs up with a renewed interest in the label — a supposed Polossance, propelled by a new generation’s zeal for prep-inflected pastel button-ups and straight-cut chinos.
As streetwear has waned and high fashion, with its rising prices, has swelled further out of reach, Lauren has thrived with its just-aspirational-enough image. Turns out in 2026, some shoppers still dream of dressing for unhurried afternoons beside a Connecticut tennis court with a G and T in hand.
The Polo of today offers some fresher takes on prep: A recent presentation in Paris for the women’s line featured some brown plaid harem pants, a cheetah-spotted suede jacket and a cable-knit sweater dress that unfurled into tentacle-like pleats.
But for the most part, the Polo people crave has been there all along. There’s more than half a century’s worth of chinos and patchwork madras coats to sort through, available at the many Polo-dedicated vintage stores that now dot the world.
With so much hype around that secondary market, PoloFest was a way for the brand to cash in on the enthusiasm — something many of its luxury competitors are loath to do.
It was also a nice excuse to capture a lot of people wearing a lot of nearly forgotten Polo relics. Our photographer Simbarashe Cha did just that.
The post Big ’Fits at a Meet-Up for Polo Obsessives appeared first on New York Times.
