Ralph Lauren

A vital luxury brand has to engage and reflect a contemporary world to maintain its relevancy.

The ideas about to be expressed are not all mine. They were gleaned during a dinner conversation at Kingdom in Bushwick, which is a pretty funny place to have a sustained conversation about "luxury".

And once again Mr Lauren has beaten the originals at their own game.

The Ralph Lauren empire is not playing around .

Tyson Beckford at the height of his undeniable beauty

My colleague at MDC , Betty Sze uploaded a post on OTM titled, "Change Begins Today" which contrasted the inaugration of Barack Obama as the President Of The United States with the lack of color on the Milan FW 09 men's runways (as per a Guy Trebay article in the NY Times). The following day I was at a shoot for frillr.com with an unsigned black male model. The subject of why there has been no black male super-star since Tyson Beckford came up. I was asked why did I think that was . I found myself stumped. Not because I didn't have a point of view on the subject but more truthfully, because I had several complicated and conflicting ideas about the issue. A whole frenzy of questions came to mind.

Chanel Iman: Ford: for Ralph Lauren Collection SS08

Red's Tyler Riggs is very coveted for the Milan/Paris Shows FW08

At the women shows I look at the models. At the men's shows, I come with a magnifying glass seriously trained on the clothes. The clock's counting down to the FW08 men's presentations in Milan and Paris and this very specialized market-that of high end designer menswear - is in a very transitional place right this minute. Time was you knew what you would be getting well in advance when it came to "The Shows" . And what entertainment these shows would provide, Tom Ford's flagrant Gucci vs Miuccia Prada's highminded men's line. Raf Simons's art gallery perfect wauldrobe vs Galliano's flamboyant bucaneers. And then the piece de resistance. Hedi Slimane's rock inflected couture level work at Dior Homme. What clear identities they had then.
So what are the shows with the best advance billing right this minute? After being eclipsed by the perverse streamlining at Dior, the Prada suit has a lot of lost ground to cover. Oddly enough Ralph Lauren's return to Milan this season has high expectations building for the glimpse of some kind of spectacle, if not in terms of the looks which are sure to be conservative, then in terms of the show's production values. The revamp of Ferre, as previously mentioned on TI has the label whores (like us) drumming the thumbs in suspense.

IMG=Inevitable Money Girl: A sleek and sexy Hilary Rhoda: Polaroid date 12-5-07

Nancy Cunard:Heiress, Muse, Political Idealist: Lois Gordon: Columbia Press

Yes I confess, TI is a bit of a Nancy Cunard cultist. As much as she would probably have hated the idea, Madame Cunard keeps bobbing up as a reference point in the fashion trade . As recently as two years ago, Ralph Lauren of all people used her as a touchstone in his FW 05 campaign and both Vogue Italia and L'Uomo Vogue have been known to invoke her as an icon. I love her literary biography "These Were The Hours" about her years as a publisher and today I'm locked in the house with Lois Gordon's masterful new biography on NC. Fluid, detailed and a little worshipful (even I have to admit Nancy's poetry was NOT the kismet), Gordon's overview of Cunard's life is a must buy nonetheless. It is chockfull of brilliant tid bits, like King George changing the family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to "Windsor" during the anti-Hun frenzy of WW1, as well as great stories of Nancy's laison with the original Imagist, Ezra Pound. And that's just for starters, Cunard tallied with modernist literary icons like T.S Eliot and Wyndham Lewis. The summary at the American Library Review says it all "Scandalous, gifted, and, in her own tormented way, heroic, Cunard blazed brightly at the epicenter of a brutal yet creative epoch." I love this woman. If she had had a great-grandaughter I'd have hunted her down with a marriage proposal. It would have kept the family tradition going, no?