Coming Home

“Summer is more than a season. It’s a natural world of endless blue skies, the ocean, green fields, and white fences, rusticity and elegance with a quality of light that inspires dreamers year after year,” Ralph said at the launch of Meadow Lane. He could have also been referencing his own beachside homes through the years: rustic, well-loved spaces that he and Ricky lived in during summers when their children were young, before settling in Montauk.

Just as Ephron did with those cinematic bedroom scenes, it’s perhaps easiest to spot Meadow Lane’s sensibility through its bedding. Here, a series of blue-and-indigo patchwork shams and throw pillows, done in yarn-dyed plaid, are the entry points, along with floral indigo duvets and comforters. Other throws feature delicate calico prints, hand-quilted onto cotton voile with a miniature lace trim, or refreshed sailing stripes. Another throw, the chambray-clad Delaney, embodies the very yearning of cottage nostalgia. Its fabrication is the same as Ralph’s chambray dress shirts, but it’s the reintroduction of a ruffle trim and the exquisite detailing of a cross-stitch logo that take the pillow into heirloom territory. Textiles and wallcoverings in coordinating calicos and stripes add to the beach cottage feel, with sun-worn blues enveloping rooms and swathing upholstered furniture, whose legs see the return of a ruffled skirt. Sun-washed rugs give the appearance of a well-visited home, and box-pleated silk lampshades, wicker accessories, and indigo-glazed porcelain table lamps all add layers of homeyness.

On the table, a series of Antique Marble dinnerware is the star. It’s part of Ralph’s ongoing partnership with English pottery maker Burleigh and uses earthenware with an intricate hand-done dotwork pattern that is then stippled by artisans before using the 250-year-old tissue transfer method to apply the custom design. The result is a one-of-a-kind marbled pattern in deep indigo on each piece, a motif that places well with the existing Ralph Lauren x Burleigh Garden Vine and Faded Peony dinnerware collections. It all adds up to a collection whose details point to the very thing that makes nostalgia so alluring: comfort.

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