Your browser's JavaScript functionality is turned off. Please turn it on so that you can experience the full capabilities of this site.

The authentic and timeless world of Ralph Lauren

April 2025

RL/Women

Our Four Favorite Seaside Sensibilities

The Hamptons is many things, but to Ralph it’s a tapestry of inspiration that centers on four particular modes of beach life, from wave chasers and equestrians to artists and writers.

NO.1

Wave Chasers

Montauk’s reputation for having some of the best surfing on the East Coast is no secret, but only the truly seasoned and devoted are willing to stick around for the actual surf season in the fall, when the area’s waters produce A-frames and what some describe as “cold, perfect barrels” to ride. The hamlet’s Ditch Plains Beach was a well-known surf destination by the 1960s, with hundreds entering its surf competitions (and a disapproving town board eager to minimize the sport’s impact on the then-very-sleepy locale, which was focused more on big-catch fishing). Now, Montauk’s surf-hippie culture is one of its main exports, still authentically apparent in the sandy revelry of Ditch Plains (known by locals as Clown Town, perhaps affectionately, as yet another new crowd moves in) and at local spots like Joni’s. The crochet-clad, surfs-up sensibility is also inevitably reinterpreted at the infamous Surf Lodge, the hotel-cum-music–venue where both guests and performers translate the vibe to a more stylized version of the swim-trunks-and-shell-necklaces look. 

Style Note: Classic Hamptons blue and white gets a bohemian, sand-and-surf–inspired update with tropical shorts, textured raffia, and hand-stitched patchwork knits, worn as swim cover-ups.

NO.2

Year-Rounders

Each season, the Hamptons swells with the arrival of the “summer people” and the beach-house bustle of pop-up restaurants, antique and art shows, garden parties, barbecues, and activities in the sun. Those who stay on after Labor Day are a rarer breed: the local. They are a flinty group who experience the Hamptons much as it would have been perhaps 80 years ago, when it was a smattering of sleepy coastal villages with two lines of work: farming and fishing. Both professions are still a conspicuous feature of Hamptons life, with produce stands dotting Route 27, and a flotilla of sport fishing boats that bob in Montauk harbor before setting out for tuna, marlin, and swordfish. Those who work the land and sea might be spotted in much-beloved and repaired denim, salt-seasoned sweatshirts with busted seams, and long-billed caps bleached by a thousand afternoons in the sun. By sunset, you might find them on the deck of The Montauket—a family-owned bar known to its regulars as “The Hill”—or the Shagwong Tavern, which first opened its doors in 1936.

Style Note: Bold stripes, classic fisherman knits, and functional denim and accessories (like the new Polo Play bag in sturdy canvas) are pieces that blend in wherever there’s the sound of waves.

O-Ring Leather Sandal

ALL 30,980

Braided Calfskin Belt

ALL 26,780

Cotton Chino Short

ALL 15,230 ALL 12,184

Hand-Burnished Leather Double-Prong Belt

ALL 30,450

Lightweight Fleece Long-Sleeve Polo

ALL 20,480

NO.3

Artists & Writers

For generations, the East End has served as a refuge, point of inspiration, and social magnifying glass for the creative class through its various artists’ colonies, clubs, and cliques. From a patronage legacy through the Parrish Art Museum to the cedar-shingled cottage in the Springs where Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner created some of their most important works, the area is brimming with past and present examples of artistic output. Countless authors, including James Fenimore Cooper, John Steinbeck, and the “Sagg Main Set” (Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, George Plimpton, et al.) have called the towns of Sagaponack and Sag Harbor home (Herman Melville’s Moby Dick also references the latter, which holds a “marathon” reading of the novel each September). This collective legacy has created a patina of style that permeates the creative communities that still inhabit the Hamptons. It’s sun-washed striped tees, paint-splattered trousers, frayed espadrilles, well-worn leather fisherman sandals; a uniform of artistic utility that traverses studios, galleries, beach walks, dinner at Bobby Van’s—perhaps even the annual Artists and Writers Charity Softball Game that takes place every August in East Hampton.

Style Note: Nuanced, painterly hues in delicate stripes and florals plus well-worn accessories set a subtle, sophisticated tone.

Curved Tapered Jean

ALL 23,630

NO.4

Trad & True

The Hamptons might have first been put on the map nationally in the 1980s, but its charm was known by the Gilded Age families of New York a century before, when Vanderbilts, Rockefellers, and Carnegies erected sweeping summer estates, quaint beachfront cottages, and all the other infrastructure of a well-lived summer life: polo pitches, horse paddocks, grass tennis courts, and majestic golf courses. (The area boasts no less than three links-style courses considered among the greatest in the world.) This is the Hamptons of private hedgerows and white picket fences, classic shingle-style architecture, ancient hydrangea bushes, chintz on the porch, charming street names—Gin Lane, Tuckahoe Road, Further Lane—and grass-stained spectator shoes. As a world of taste and style inspiration, it never gets old.

Style Note: Preppy, equestrian-inspired pieces make up the quintessential sporting uniform, while all-white ensembles tap into beachside summer soirées.