Ralph Lauren takes the Western family heirlooms within the concept of the artist’s studio for SS24.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard was, as its name implies, once a maker of military ships. It was shuttered and sold by the US Navy to the City of New York in 1966, just one year before a brash young man named Ralph Lauren sold a range of ultra-wide neckties to Bloomingdale’s. On Friday night, Lauren took up temporary residence at the Yard, transforming a vacant warehouse into a stunning artist’s studio where he showed his Spring 2024 collection.

Lauren’s concept of an artist’s studio is very much like his concept of a garage – which is to say, not like yours or mine. (See: his Fall 2017 collection, shown in the garage of his Upstate New York home, alongside his dazzling collection of race cars.) This studio mesmerized with extravagant dichotomies; massive, shadow-throwing chandeliers hung from the rafters in counterpoint to ladders and empty frames propped against walls. Yet it still felt unpretentiously welcoming, with canvas-draped walls and country French wood-framed seating, ruggedly upholstered. The event brought in a multi-generational glamorama – JLo, Gabrielle Union, Julianne Moore, Diane Keaton, Amanda Seyfried and Ariana DeBose among those in the front row, and on the runway, the glorious Christy Turlington, who closed the show.

The clothes more than stood up to the surroundings. Over the years, Lauren has worked and refined a number of motifs now intrinsically linked to his oeuvre, denim at the top of the list. Here, he opened with it, and it was almost as if he had thrown down the gauntlet to himself: “How can I make denim more – something?” He can’t make it more distressed, more rugged, more functional; he’s been there and done all of that, pushing the material’s natural qualities to the nth degree. So how about more beautiful? And so he did, with embroideries, ombre flowers, rhinestones, even feathers – for looks that included a striped shirt and jeans, bustier eveningwear and a spectacular jacket bedecked in the aforementioned sparkles and feathers. Tricked out – yes, but never tricky. These were inventive clothes for the chic eccentric who loves a decorative flourish but also knows when to say when with alluring results.

Lauren then moved in a different direction with a black-and-gold group that spanned from day into night: urbane tailoring; a Western-chic lavishly embellished gold skirt with a black shirt and cowboy hat; eveningwear that ranged from a Pony polo shirt and glittering ball skirt to linear beauties including Christy’s high-drama gown in liquid gold. The final theme, based on silk foulards, nodded towards those neckties that got him started so many years ago. Though at times too feisty in its combinations, this group offered a polished approach to colorful, flamboyant dressing.

At show’s end, the giant wooden doors anchoring the set opened upon a “barn” inspired by Lauren’s Colorado ranch. It housed four seemingly endless rows of tables set for dinner with black-and-white floral cloths, abundant heirloom roses and subtly offbeat tabletop fare. Would that we could all make such magic out of mismatched flatware.