Ralph Lauren announced today the creation of a new fashion festival dedicated entirely to its Polo line. The inaugural edition will run from October 23 to 25 in Shibuya, Tokyo, a city that has long been a major hub of Ralph Lauren enthusiasts.
In its announcement today, Ralph Lauren said the three-day event will bring together collectors, vintage dealers, artists, enthusiasts and other cultural voices around an exhibition of archival Polo Ralph Lauren, a live speaker series and a vintage marketplace. Other, as-yet-unrevealed highlights are promised.
The announcement added that PoloFest is intended as a recurring format, with each edition examining the history and style of Polo through the particular culture of the city in which it is staged.
Polo was the name Lauren put on the label of his first collection of ties back in 1967. A year later he expanded into menswear proper, retaining the name, even though, as he later recalled, he had never at that point attended a polo match.
At the time he reputedly observed: “I’m selling a feeling.” By 1970 Polo had expanded into sportswear and accessories, but it was the introduction of the Polo shirt in 1972 that gave the name its most enduring and accessible expression. As the Ralph Lauren universe subsequently expanded into lines including Purple Label and Double RL, Polo evolved into Lauren’s broadest proposition: the label through which his world of prep, sport, Americana and aspiration could reach the widest audience.
That audience proved especially receptive in Japan. Ralph Lauren dates its relationship with the country to 1976.
Back in 2012, the company launched RL Vintage, an online project devoted to sourcing and reselling archival Ralph Lauren pieces. In the process, it discovered just how deeply a collecting culture had already developed around the brand there.
At the time David Lauren described “a cult of Ralph Lauren” in Japan as “kind of amazing.” Tokyo had become home to a network of specialist dealers and collectors so committed to Lauren’s vision of America that anyone hunting for the perfect old suede field jacket might be better off bypassing Brooklyn and heading straight to the Japanese capital.
Many of these key local dealers and collectors, alongside others from outside the country, will participate in the inaugural PoloFest. Back in 1980, Lauren told The Washington Post: “Somebody said one time, I’m actually a writer who writes through clothes. I think that’s absolutely right.” PoloFest will be a fascinating experiment in bringing together some of the most voracious readers of the world Lauren has spent nearly 60 years writing.