Ralph Lauren Fall 2026 Proves Personal Style Is All About the Journey

At 86, Ralph Lauren is operating at a pace that would exhaust designers a third of his age. In the past month alone, he brought his New York-based house back to the Milan Men’s Fashion Week calendar, staging its first runway show there in two decades; outfitted Team USA for the Winter Olympics currently underway in Milano Cortina; and, on February 10, the eve of New York Fashion Week, presented his fall 2026 women’s ready-to-wear collection.

For his latest outing, Lauren once again took over the Jack Shainman Gallery downtown, where floor-to-ceiling murals of a dreamlike forest set the scene. “I love the adventure of fashion,” he explained in the show notes, adding that the collection was inspired by “a renegade spirit, and the confidence of the woman who will wear it in her own personal way, to tell her own story.” Embodying that ethos in the flesh was Lana Del Rey, wearing a leather blazer, frilly poet’s blazer, and cowboy boots, who arrived hand in hand with her husband, Jeremy Dufrene. Del Rey has long reigned as pop’s queen of gothic Americana, blending nostalgia and newness into a sound—and a style—that’s distinctly her own.

From the moment Gigi Hadid stepped onto the Persian rug–covered runway in a Donegal tweed corset and matching pencil skirt cinched with a chain-link belt, the collection set forth a “dialogue between softness and strength.” A jacquard floral blazer was grounded by hand-distressed barrel-leg leather pants. A professional longline coat-and-trouser set was offset by a plush leopard-print shawl, and a cozy chunky knit sweater was shot through with metallic embroidery and beading. The latter was among several flashes of armor that emerged—from a sheer, hooded tunic that shimmered like chain mail, and evening gowns with a knightly sheen, to a bold-shouldered silver jacket that nodded to medieval romance by way of Manhattan power dressing. An earthen color palette—deep soil browns, boulder grays, forest greens—kept the lineup rooted in reality, tempering the theatrical with something unmistakably lived-in.

In the front row, Anne Hathaway, Rebecca Hall, Morgan Spector, Emilia Jones, and Ariana DeBose watched as the collection’s muse came into focus: a woman who “respects the timeless quality of things from the past but reinvents them for now.” That’s long been Lauren’s promise, of course—heritage not as stasis, but as evolution.

Del Rey’s presence only sharpened the point. The singer and Lauren share a certain fluency in the language of the open road, self-mythology, and the romance of the American West—translated through their respective crafts. Lauren’s fall 2026 collection suggested that adventure need not arrive via loud trends or the hushed codes of quiet luxury. It can begin simply: a scarf-print dress toughened up by a herringbone jacket, or a beaded going-out top worn beneath an oversized duster. In Lauren’s world, personal style is less about spectacle than momentum. Wherever your journey begins, the imperative is the same: keep moving. Here, a look at some of the highlights.