Never Let You Go
We all have that favorite Polo piece we’ve owned forever, patched and mended until it’s become one of a kind, a second skin. Three writers—Eric Konigsberg, Michael Hainey, and Joel Griffith—hail the purchase of a lifetime.Never Let You Go
We all have that favorite Polo piece we’ve owned forever, patched and mended until it’s become one of a kind, a second skin. Three writers—Eric Konigsberg, Michael Hainey, and Joel Griffith—hail the purchase of a lifetime.
Some years ago, when I was still a kid in high school, I saw a Polo advertisement of a guy wearing one of Ralph Lauren’s classic herringbone blazers, the one that’s since become known as the RL67. As a teenager growing up in Chicago and working summer jobs at the local grocery store, stocking fruits and vegetables, I couldn’t afford to buy it, but I never forgot how heroic the guy looked. He was confident, a man making his way in the world, and looking great while doing it. Eventually, I moved to New York and became an editor at GQ. Finally, I had some money in my pocket, so I went to the men’s flagship on Madison Avenue and had the exact jacket made: a tan-and-cream weave, with two buttons and a single vent.
I’ll never forget when it was ready, and I went to pick it up and slipped it on. I stood there for a moment, staring at myself in the mirror, transformed! When the sales associate asked me if I’d like it bagged to carry home, I waved him off. “No thanks, I’ll wear it home.” And I walked down Madison Avenue, across Fifth, and then through Central Park. I felt at last like I belonged. And since that day, hardly a week has passed that I have not worn the jacket.
A lot of people think a navy blazer is the only-one-you-need jacket. I beg to differ. I’ve always loved tweed for its versatility, for the fact that it’s not a navy blazer. Sure, they both pair perfectly with a pair of beat-up jeans, but only a jacket with the refined Polo cut, matched with the crag of the fabric looks great with or without a tie. To me, nothing’s worse than a navy blazer without a tie. You look like a sad divisional manager trying to dress down—or a political stiff trying to pretend he’s hip when giving a stump speech. But the herringbone jacket with a crisp white button-down looks rakish, not wonky, a touch worldly rather than suburban. This is a jacket that gets the right looks from the right people.
I should know.
A few years ago, when I was an editor at GQ, I happened to be put next to Ralph himself at a dinner. After we sat down, I could feel his eye discreetly taking in my jacket. I started to get nervous. By then, I’d been wearing it for almost twenty years—I’d always wear it when I went to interview subjects I was profiling—Clint Eastwood or Keith Richards or Bruce Springsteen. For me, the jacket was my version of Tom Wolfe’s white suit: I was dressed to respect my subjects but also to stand out. In that time, it had become as worn-in and loved as an old denim jacket, a classic car that had rolled the odometer, or a pair of hunting boots that have become soft as a glove—and the paces I’d put it through showed. My sleeves were frayed at the cuffs, and I’d had to buck up the elbows with leather patches to keep them from blowing out.
Toward the end of the evening, as we got up, Ralph put his hand on my arm and said the best thing ever: “This is a magnificent jacket. The individuality. Where’d you get it?”
I just smiled and said, “From you!”
And then, as he did a double take, I told him a story about a kid seeing an image he’d created long ago, and how much it meant to me that the things I saw there—optimism, individualism, confidence, character—inspired him still.
I got my first Polo oxford—classic blue with a breast pocket—when I was in high school, in the mid-1990s. My dad was on his way to becoming the head of the FAA, and we’d soon find our way to Washington, D.C. But, then, we were in St. Charles, a suburb of Chicago. The school I went to was huge, like the one in The Breakfast Club. I ran track, and I was into grunge rock, but somehow—partly because of that shirt—I got voted “Most Preppy.”
I still have it, all these years later. Whenever I put it on, it brings back some ancient memory—the time I packed it to keep warm after a cross-country race on a cold day; the way it smelled like campfire smoke after each of my many college camping trips in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada; all the Pentax cameras I loaded with film in the Malibu Hills when I was a photography assistant to Bruce Weber, and we were shooting Elaine Irwin for a Ralph ad or Pamela Anderson for W magazine.
Home base, after I graduated from Brooks, New York City, but we were always traveling—Miami, upstate New York, LA, all over Europe. In that time, I’ve worn it many different ways—over a Pearl Jam T-shirt, sleeves hiked up, and layered with a flannel; with shorts and Chucks; and, when I first went out on my own and was meeting clients for dinner, with a tie and a blazer I got at Rugby. In other words, I wore it as a student and in the years before I met my wife, and now I wear it still, a married father of two, a photographer with his own assistant.
That’s what I appreciate most about this shirt—it’s a collage of memories, many of which are preserved in its rips and tears: the patched hole above the pocket (stuffed one too many times with rolls of 120 film); the lines of stitches up and down the sleeves (rolled and rolled and rolled, they eventually began to fray and split). A number of different tailors have helped me keep it going—mending this, sewing that. Each repair has only given it more character, more life, more appeal. These days, Meryl, my wife, sometimes likes to wear it herself. I love the way it looks on her. But I can’t help reminding her to be more careful with it than I’ve been.
It was August 2001. The Twin Towers had not yet been struck—the world was still, as far as we knew, at peace, even if the economy was already in a bubble freefall. I, meanwhile, had just sold my first book. I climbed up Madison Avenue through the Upper East Side one Saturday morning looking to reward myself—perhaps with a new sport coat or some good shoes. In the Polo flagship store, though, I was diverted by a table laid out with a stunning array of cable-knit cashmere sweaters, in an unspeakably gorgeous range of hues—jewel tones, autumnal heathers, and—my destiny—several hot pastels.
I bought one in coral and one in lavender, because saying no to either was too difficult.
Something about the juxtaposition between the outrageous tropical colors and the formal elegance of the sweaters themselves got to me. It was like drinking champagne from a horsehide loafer. True luxury. When I showed a friend the contents of my shopping bag at the end of the day, she channeled my thought process and exclaimed, “Recession? What recession? I’ll take two!”
The things are unexpectedly hard-wearing and ought to last at least another couple decades, but so soft I could sleep in them. I’ve since bought several more, but the two that inaugurated my habit remain my favorites and rare is the trip I take without packing one.
I’ve worn them enough to justify their acquisition many times over. I can measure my life by the significant events at which I had on one or the other: watching my beloved Nebraska Cornhuskers beat No. 1–ranked Oklahoma that fall on a trick play called the “Black 41 Pass Reverse,” bringing my oldest child to meet his newly arrived sister in the maternity ward (six years later), optioning the movie rights to a story I’d written—after a five-way bidding war—and learning that my favorite director was attached (10 years after that). I got fired from a job in one but (perhaps it was the boldness of the color) at least saw fit to tell the boss she was making a foolish mistake. Once, I was wearing one around the office at The New York Times for what I expected to be a deskbound day of phone reporting, when an editor dispatched me to Harlem to wangle an interview with a longtime US congressman suddenly poised to take over the House Ways and Means Committee. In his office doorway, he agreed on the spot and said I could spend the afternoon accompanying him through the city on his victory lap.
“I like that sweater,” he said. “I can tell you’ve got confidence.” Ways and means, indeed.
