Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren founded his brand in 1967 with a line of wide neckties he designed and sold to Bloomingdale’s, and from that starting point built one of the most recognizable lifestyle brands in American fashion history. The brand’s visual language, which draws from American heritage clothing traditions including prep school, New England hunting and sporting, Western ranch, and the Ivy League campus, has been maintained with remarkable consistency across nearly sixty years and across the range of product categories the brand has expanded into. The Georgetown store at 1245 Wisconsin Avenue NW carries the brand at the address that Georgetown’s heritage culture is most naturally identified with.

The Wisconsin Avenue location carries the Polo Ralph Lauren range that covers most of the occasions a Georgetown wardrobe requires: the cotton oxford shirts and cable-knit sweaters that define the Polo casual look, the tailored sport coats and trousers for business casual occasions, the outerwear from the field jacket to the barn coat that the brand’s equestrian and country heritage has always included, and the accessories from belts to loafers that complete the look. The Georgetown store does not typically carry the Purple Label bespoke and high-end tailoring tier that the brand’s New York flagship stores maintain, but the Polo and Double RL collections at this address represent the central range of what most Ralph Lauren customers shop.

The Georgetown context is significant for the brand. Ralph Lauren built his visual world partly from an aesthetic that Georgetown embodies in its actual physical form: Federal period architecture, brick sidewalks, established families in inherited houses, the particular combination of old money and intellectual prestige that the Georgetown neighborhood and university have historically represented. The brand’s customer in Georgetown is not buying clothing that gestures toward this world; they often live in it.

Home goods are available through the brand’s full product range online, and the Wisconsin Avenue store carries a selection of the lifestyle and fragrance products that extend Ralph Lauren beyond clothing. The seasonal collection reflects the brand’s consistent movement between the heritage aesthetic and the current fashion moment, which produces each season’s version of the same essential look with updated colors and silhouettes.

Hours run Monday through Saturday from 10am to 7pm and Sunday from 11am to 6pm. The Wisconsin Avenue store serves both Georgetown’s established residential community and the visitors who associate Georgetown with the American heritage aesthetic that the neighborhood and the brand share. For the Georgetown resident who has worn Polo for decades and wants to see the current season’s version of the shirts and sweaters that have been in their wardrobe since college, the Wisconsin Avenue address is the neighborhood address for the brand. The fragrance and accessories section of the store carries the lifestyle range that extends Ralph Lauren beyond clothing. Hours run Monday through Saturday from 10am to 7pm and Sunday from 11am to 6pm.