SIR Mix-a-Lot

Look, Muffy, our old clothes are back! A generation consumed with nostalgia rediscovers and reshuffles trad style their way. The new official preppy dress code is here, and one pony is riding high.

-  JESSICA IREDALE

Close your eyes. Picture someone who wears Polo Ralph Lauren. Other than Ralph himself, who springs to mind? A dad—or grandfather—from your country club? A ball boy or girl at the U.S. Open? Maybe it’s Diane Keaton as Annie Hall or Will Smith as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air or Princess Diana. Maybe it’s you in college, if you enrolled between the late ’80s and the early aughts. Fresh in the pop culture record is Taylor Swift on the cover of Time and Jacob Elordi in Saltburn, in which he wears a cornflower-blue Polo V-neck over a white T-shirt when Oliver first lays his lovesick eyes on him across the Oxford quad.

None of these answers are wrong. In fact, all of them are spot-on for one of the many archetypes—preppy, hip-hop, athlete, aristocrat—that Lauren has conjured in the 56 years since he launched Polo. More recently someone not usually associated with the Canon of Ralph has popped up wearing those signature ponies all over town: the creative cool kid. Usually found downtown, whether that means Ridgewood, Queens, or Silver Lake in L.A., these characters wear Polo in a kind of post-ironic way, finding the once ubiquitous rugby shirts, windbreakers, and American flag and Polo Bear sweaters on vintage or resale sites and folding them into their everyday wardrobes.