‘More to life than clothing’ for Ralph Lauren
Designer has reopened his Polo Bar in Manhattan
On the deck of his home in Montauk, New York, over the sound of crashing waves — a vigorous white noise, more roaring than soothing — Ralph Lauren said he was glad to be back.
Two days earlier, he had returned to New York for the first time since relocating to his Colorado ranch last spring. It was the longest the Bronx-born designer of cozy Americana fashion had spent away from his home state.
“Colorado was mountains, and a different life,” he said, one of horseback riding, hunting and hiking.
Lauren, who is foremost an architect of aesthetics and engineer of vibes, wanted a moment to transition before settling back into his main residence, an estate in Westchester County. So he stopped for a short stay at his airy Frank Lloyd Wrightian beach house, low-slung and understated in stone and cedar, framed by Montauk’s dunes and pines.
“I like the peace and quiet,” said Lauren, now walking the grassy slopes of his backyard. When his pool came into view, so did a basket of fresh-rolled white towels, placed poolside as if to implant the idea that here, on this land and at any moment, even on a near-sweater-weather Tuesday in October, you could decide to take a dip.
“I love the house because it’s not a big deal,” he said.
Lauren was submitting to an interview — he does them rarely — to coincide with the reopening of the Polo Bar, his clubby midtown Manhattan restaurant favored by the rich, the famous and the adjacent. When it opened in 2015, after successful
endeavors in Chicago (RL Restaurant) and Paris (Ralph’s), the wood-paneled, dimly lit spot became Lauren’s pet project.
Like many restaurants forced to close at the start of the pandemic, the Polo Bar pivoted to delivery and takeout in 2020, before reopening its private dining room this year. But it did not fully reopen its main dining space until Oct. 12.
And reopen it did. Down a flight of wide wooden stairs, the basement-turned-dining room was ebullient that night, jammed with a static of chatter and clinking silverware. Diners greeted friends and acquaintances, occasionally pulling up a chair or sliding into a booth to join another group.
An abridged list of those diners: Hugh Jackman, Al Roker and Clive Davis; designers Tory Burch, Thom Browne, and Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia
of Oscar de la Renta; Stellene Volandes, editor of Town & Country; an often-shirtless Instagram-famous couple who, a staff member said, “have the best abs in the world.”
And on their tables, an assortment of crowd pleasers: the Polo Bar’s signature $30 hamburgers, shrimp cocktails, BLT salads, corned beef sandwiches and ice cream sundaes.
In the front of the house, Nelly Moudime, the head maitre d’ cheerfully dispensed greetings and personal send-offs as if she weren’t one of the busiest people in the room — as if she didn’t need to drop everything, for example, to accommodate security for the unannounced arrival of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Moudime, 40, has worked at the Polo Bar since it opened and is among the 90% of staff retained throughout the
pandemic. Before takeout and delivery service began, she spent her furlough at home in Harlem, working on a script.
“Don’t you feel the energy?” she said. “I feel like we never left, and at the same time, we realize everything that we went through and how this is almost a miracle.”
Several people described the same essential feeling: that being at the restaurant again had made them briefly forget about the troubled world outside, for either a fleeting moment or the whole evening. Variations on the phrase “It’s like nothing happened” were happily tossed around. (When the line was repeated to Moudime, she recoiled: “No, a lot happened. We lost a dishwasher to COVID. We had staff members that were sick” during the pandemic.)
But that feeling, though concentrated on reopening
night, predates the pandemic, Moudime argued: “The space transports you. It allows you to be whoever you want to be at that moment.”
At 82, Lauren, formally CEO and executive chair of his company, said he feels stronger than ever and has no intention of stepping away or retiring. (Although when that does happen, there will still be a Lauren in the executive ranks: his son David, currently the chief branding and innovation officer.) The clock didn’t stop when he celebrated his 50 years in business with much fanfare in 2018.
“I’m working, I’m strong, I love what I’m doing,” he said. “Some days, I don’t, but it’s not even a question. No one has said to me, ‘Ralph, how long are you going to stay?’ ”
During his time away from New York, Lauren worked on Zoom, and the brand released three collections. Although there was some expectation that he might return to New York for the America-themed Met Gala, where his brand dressed Jennifer Lopez, Kacey Musgraves and Chance the Rapper, or for Fashion Week in September — the first live fashion week since February 2020 — he said he didn’t think he was ready to come back with one of his glamorous, star-studded shows.
“People were very tired of runways,” he said of those pre-pandemic days. “They wanted something new. Now, they’re excited to go back and see a real runway show. So it’s part of the game.”
That game is one that Lauren has been playing begrudgingly for his entire career. He often says that he has “never liked fashion” but wants to “stand for something,” and that something is making things that last and get better with age. He identifies as a “normal person,” his enormous wealth notwithstanding — a fairly private guy who once wore a Kmart shirt while being interviewed on national television and whose impetus for opening his Paris restaurant was a craving for an American hamburger.
He, a man who built his empire on clothes, believes there is more to life than clothes, that, in fact, “we have too much clothes — but you’re in business, you keep going.” That is what drove him into restaurants and what may eventually drive him into opening a hotel. He wants to do one, he said, but is still waiting for the right time and space.
“It’s all one story,” he said. “Whatever you’re wearing is part of your life, but going out is another part of your life. I’m not a genius, but I have an understanding of life, and part of your life is going to different places.”