Truck & Tool Rental The Home Depot Logo DIY Projects & Ideas Flooring & Area Rugs Lighting & Ceiling FansI really like the woven cane covered cushions of the New Safari Modern Club Chair; it along with the New Safari Rattan Cocktail Table would work well in a tropical setting. Designed in a series of exotic patterns and graphic prints, each luxurious Ralph Lauren rug is crafted from the finest natural materials in a rich, signature palette for style to suit any décor. 7'x9' - 10'x14' Rugs 7' x 9' 7' x 10' 7' x 11' 8' x 10' 8' x 11' 8' x 12' 9' x 10' 9' x 12' 9' x 13' 10' x 14' 5'x8' - 6'x9' Rugs 5' x 6' 5' x 7' 5' x 8' 6' x 8' 6' x 9' 7' x 9' 3'x5' - 4'x6' Rugs 3' x 4' 3' x 5' 3' x 6' 4' x 5' 4' x 6' 5' x 6' 2' x 5' 2' x 6' 2' x 7' 2' x 8' 2' x 9' 2' x 10' 2' x 11' 2' x 12' 2' x 13' 2' x 14' 2' x 15' 2' x 16' 2' x 18' 2' x 20' 2' x 21' 2' x 22' 3' x 5' 3' x 6' 3' x 8' 3' x 10' 3' x 12' 3' x 14' 3' x 16' 3' x 17' 3' x 18' 3' x 20'
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, Tufted Hand - Loomed Hand Hooked Hand Knotted Hand Loomed Hand Tufted Hand Tufted/Hooked Hand Woven Hand Woven, Flat Weave Handwoven Hides Loom Knotted Natural Fiber Natural Sheep Skin Power Loomed Shag Tufted Viscose Viscose, Cotton Wool Wool, ViscoseNew Frontiers in FashionAre You Baller Enough To Shop At Ralph Lauren's Private New Palazzo In Milan?Have you heard of the experience economy? Well, the major players in fashion have, which explains why they're opening hotels, restaurants, private clubs, and even pastry shops to bring the fantasies in their ads to life. Devin Friedman goes fully immersive in the next generation of fashion marketing.Arguably the baller-est restaurant opening in New York City last year was essentially a brand extension of a publicly traded fashion line. It's not even in the right neighborhood to be a hot restaurant. You expect to see Kanye West at the Spotted Pig, crashing Charlie Rose's party on Valentine's Day with Kim Kardashian (note: that actually happened), not in Midtown, a few blocks away from the American Girl doll store.
But there he was, seated not far from the table Barbra Streisand recently occupied. The dining room at the Polo Bar is located in what is essentially the basement of the Polo flagship store, but somehow the brilliant aestheticians of the Ralph Lauren empire have transformed it into something that feels like it's been there for a hundred years, something that apparently appeals to both Barbra and Kanye.I met David Lauren, son of Ralph, there for a drink in the spring. The scion of the family business swept in on a rain-soaked evening, wearing a trench coat, a pinstriped double-breasted suit, and an old Polo baseball cap, looking like a vision of the '80s. He is a man, in that suit, with those gentle eyes, who should be played by James Spader (not current Spader; vintage). He ordered an orange juice at the bar—they were making it for him even as he entered—then took me down to the dining room. It was such a pure execution: heavy leather dining chairs, thick parquet floors, nautical light fixtures, a bunch of polo mallets lined in a polo-mallet stand in case a chukker should break out before the digestif, all bathed in syrupy golden light.
The word “Polo” was embossed on everything from the butter you spread on your bread to the linen you wipe your hands on after you pee—one does not visit the Polo Bar for its subtlety. The room makes you feel like you're dining on a fine ocean liner that was created when an old New York City squash club detached itself from Manhattan and began drifting toward England. With Kanye West inside of it.The restaurant, David says, is part of the question Ralph Lauren the brand is eternally seeking to answer: “How do you envelop people inside of a world where they feel taken care of? You want the beautiful clothes, you want delicious food, you want to be social with the right people. We're creating a dream that you can live inside of.”The idea is that when you taste the fresh-baked bread at the Prada-owned pastry shop, you later associate the aroma of yeasty goodness with $1,000 sandals.Perhaps you've heard of the “experience economy.” The idea is that people find buying experiences—mountain climbing, seeing great works of art, eating corned beef next to both polo mallets and Kim Kardashian—more moving, and valuable, than buying things.
It's appealing both to people for whom material things hold no allure (like monks, or millennials) and to people who've bought basically everything you could buy but still don't feel satisfied. (As Donald Trump would tweet: Sad!) The experience economy is a concept that brands like Ralph Lauren have lately seemed to embrace with fervor.Brands are convinced that they aren't just selling you, say, shoes; they're selling you the story that a pair of shoes tells. But the problem is that outside of their advertisements, there isn't a way for designers to make that story seem real. Places like the Polo Bar are just such a way. Or consider Restoration Hardware's cataclysmically ginormous Three Arts Club in Chicago, with its courtyard restaurant and wine vault. So oversize and comfy and perfect and well lit—it's what a great French Country armoire would be like if it served Chardonnay and tapas—that you just know you're being told a story. Lifestyle brands seem to want to manufacture associations, like reverse-engineering the Proust-madeleine phenomenon.
So when you taste the fresh-baked bread at the Prada-owned pastry shop (there is one of those), you later begin to associate the aroma of yeasty goodness with beautiful $1,000 sandals.The week before my evening at the Polo Bar, I spent a few days in the newest capital of the experience economy. Milan, where one can go to live the story that high-end fashion is telling us. Milan, where I had a drink at the Bar Martini at the Dolce & Gabbana palazzo before touring the private Alta Sartoria atelier where men can have clothes made by the company's finest tailors. (I also had my hair cut at Dolce & Gabbana's barbershop. Tiny, two chairs, two semi-bearded Italian men, enormous numbers of hot towels, your choice of manly fragrance.) Milan, where I stayed at the Armani hotel—dimly lit, handsomely space-age, so seamlessly designed at flush right angles that you feel like you're inside a leather-paneled Italian version of Tron. Milan, where I had aperitivi at the Dsquared2 restaurant and rooftop pool—doesn't it make sense that Dsquared2's story is sexy, gritty (it's located in an industrial-ish zone), and artful, and involves being mostly naked?
Milan, where I went to Palazzo Ralph Lauren, where one can peruse the seasonal collections before regular people get their regular little hands on them and afterward dine alfresco at the single, well-appointed table on the terrace. In order to have that particular experience, one must belong to Circolo Privato, Ralph Lauren's private luxury club.If you're in the market for a bespoke suit made in Milan by the highest-end division of a formidable fashion house, you've got a tough choice when it comes to D&G's flagship atelier or Ralph Lauren's Palazzo. After all, they both have quiet rooms with gorgeously buffed floors and tables festooned with giant decorative tailoring shears. The decision comes down to whether your fantasy is Italian or American. D&G is, of course, the more Italian of the two. The atelier is finished in an impeccable combination of classic Italian aristocracy and slightly over-the-top Dolce & Gabbana-ness. I was especially impressed by the bathroom, constructed of giant slabs of beautiful Iranian onyx.
Leaving a deposit in the room is like entombing it in Sophia Loren's mausoleum. Ralph, being the brand genius that he is, steers into his Americanness rather than running away from it, even here in Milan, where the heavy industrial skies hang over the damp Italian concrete and the Alps loom at the horizon. There are black-and-white photographs of vintage cars and motorcycles, and a feel of Gatsby-esque American-male certitude prevails, but with Italian-milled fabrics, of course.As a shopping experience, though, these places at first seem slightly off-kilter. The spaces are quiet enough to hear the sound of a lint brush on well-milled wool. I mean this in the most luxurious way, but they can feel almost dead. Gone is the social lifeblood of the shopping experience; the corporeal, human part of it; the smelling of others' coffee breath, getting to watch the almost visible self-fantasy playing in the mind of a human being as he holds up a motorcycle jacket and tries to see which story he'd be telling if he bought it.
Instead, the D&G atelier and the Palazzo both give you the sense of obsessively built models, as if you've wandered into the parlor of an eccentric billionaire who, after the collapse of civilization, has constructed the most painstaking replica of the finest sartorial things of our departed society. It's appealing to a lot of people, I bet. Those who want the most pure, uncut high-end retail experience; those who want to be left alone to breathe in fabrics; and those who would pay handsomely not to have their mental space invaded by a guy fantasizing about motorcycle jackets.Here's the thing, though. Yes, all this is about commerce. It's about the experience economy. But I get the feeling that's just cover. I think these are as much aesthetic gambits as business ones. They resent the messiness of the world. The lack of uniformity. The fact that they did not personally approve the tartan cloth for the bus seat. They are constantly trying to create a world in their own image, so that you can feel as if you're inhabiting it just by buttoning up a suit or stepping into the mist of an eau de toilette.