Ezra Koenig on fashion, and his thoughts on Ralph Lauren (via Highsnobiety):
When Vampire Weekend released the single “Harmony Hall” in January, some publications were quick to join the dots between their return and fashion’s supposed volte-face to prep style. “Vampire Weekend are back and it’s good news for everyone,” reads Esquire. “Firstly, it heralds the return of their warbling Ivy League pop, something the world has clearly been staggering on without for way too long now.”
Of course, Vampire Weekend hasn’t been making that kind of music or dressing that way for a long time. When we meet, Koenig is wearing rose-colored chords by Rowing Blazers (okay, you got him there), a Dries Van Noten quarter-zip, and a single-breasted coat that looks like it’s by Marni. He’s a menswear boss in every sense, but with an impertinent twist. He digs clothes with provenance, like the fluffy teddy bear fleece his buddy Mordechai Rubinstein gifted him (there were only 50 made and Koenig has two) or the uber-rare Cape Cod T-shirt that was initially given away as a prize on Time Crisis, his radio show on Apple’s Beats 1 radio station.
These days, he’s more likely to pair an Online Ceramics tee with Air Max 97s rather than Ralph Lauren Polo and boat shoes. This sartorial transformation feels symbolic of Vampire Weekend’s brave new world, one where the weather is breezy and joints are passed around freely.
It’s bizarre how the prep tag continues to stick, and Koenig denotes his kinship with Ralph Lauren in different, unexpected terms. Lauren, like Koenig’s family, came from the working class Bronx Jewish community yet has become symbolic of WASP-y prep. “I never experienced Polo or Ralph Lauren as being the brand,” he says. “The way that people like my parents, my family, talk about it, it’s hard to explain how funny it is to a certain type of Jewish person that Ralph Lauren’s real name is Ralph Lifshitz and he’s from the Bronx.”
He expresses the notion that his fandom is rooted in a larger story of assimilation, art, and humor. “With Polo in particular, the fakeness of the brand is so built-in that, again, if your dad is a Jewish guy that grew up in the housing projects in the Bronx, you could never experience Polo or Ralph Lauren in terms of the surface level of the brand. All those other layers are so baked into it.”
By Graeme Campbell; photos by Charlie Cummings/Highsnobiety
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