Big pants, bold statements: Does fashion turn to drama in uncertain times?
A model presents a creation from the Autumn/Winter 2025 Ralph Lauren collection in New York City. Take note of the voluminous pants. Photo: Reuters
President Donald Trump is not the only one with the last Gilded Age on his mind.
Last week, Ralph Lauren held his Autumn/Winter 2025 fashion show in the bank hall of the Clock Tower Building in lower Manhattan, an Italian Renaissance revival edifice that opened in 1898 as the home of New York Life Insurance Co, complete with marble Corinthian columns, a 29-foot coffered ceiling, an ornate staircase and its own vault.
The setting was a departure from Lauren's recent trend of re-creating his own environments as the backdrops of his collections.
He has brought guests out to Ralph Hampton, his fantasy of Long Island; opened up his Madison Avenue headquarters; and re-created his Colorado ranch at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But given the tenor of the time, his latest show venue felt pretty apropos.
Actor Anne Hathaway was there, in a beige trenchcoat and bedazzled beige denim. So were singer Kacey Musgraves, in a white tank top and cowboy hat; actor Ariana DeBose, in pinstripes; and The White Lotus ingenue Sarah Catherine Hook, in a necktie.
Read more: Want to look fashionable – and ultra rich? Dress in cream, beige or off-white
What was not there, however: corsets. Or bustles (that was good news).
Instead, Lauren offered a parade of pants – and not just any old pants, but big pants.
Pants that were almost always pleated and that billowed around the legs. Pants in leather and wool. Pants that were almost… pantaloons, which sometimes were tucked into knee-high boots so they puffed out around the thighs and sometimes truncated into knickerbockers so they only looked like they were tucked into the boots.
With the pants he showed a lot of lacy jabots and ruffled white shirts, frothing at the neck.
Also, beat-up leathers and the occasional slinky backless halter dress, almost always complete with its own jabot. Everything was in black and white or camel and brown, with the occasional flash of amethyst glittering in the light.
Lauren called the show 'The Modern Romantics'.
But its references seemed to be his own work from around the last turn of the century (especially the go-go Wall Street era when he built his empire) with, perhaps, a nod to the 'dandy' theme of the upcoming Met Gala, that celebration of fashion and financial excess, mixed in.
Ralph Lauren greets the audience at the end of his runway show. Photo: AP
And all of it was made more interesting by the tensions – between masculine and feminine, hard and soft – running like threads through the looks.
The effect was less escapist than is often the case with Lauren's cinematic productions and more pointed.
It seemed to say, forget the hemline index – that folky 'economic indicator' suggesting that skirts go up when things are good and come down when things turn bad – and instead consider the big pants gauge.
This hinges on the idea that when things get unpredictable, when you feel like you are teetering on the edge of the volcano, a lot of material around the legs may be exactly what everyone wants to wear.
Read more: Is 'quiet luxury' dead? New York Fashion Week roars with bold street styles
Well, it is a form of protective covering. Why not also a bellwether?
At the end of the show, Lauren materialised on the grand hall's mezzanine, wearing a black longhorn sweater.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who was sitting next to Lauren's wife, Ricky, craned her neck upward and snapped photos on her smartphone as her fellow guests applauded and Lauren waved to the audience spread out below – lord, for the moment, of all he surveyed. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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