As controversy swirls around American Eagle ads featuring actor Sydney Sweeney for what some say is culturally insensitive messaging, a campaign for a different famous apparel brand is also grabbing attention.
Ralph Lauren’s Oak Bluffs campaign launched last week, building on a collection inspired by crisp styling ingrained in the culture of historically Black colleges and visible in the Black enclave on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, for which the campaign is named.
The way Sheryl Wesley sees it, the collection represents deference to the deep history of Black people on this island about 90 miles south of Boston.
“What it has done is illuminate what we’ve already been doing here for years,” said Wesley, a Howard University graduate who organizes HBCU Legacy Week on the Vineyard, a multiday celebration of Black culture featuring social, professional and political events.
Massachusetts abolished slavery in 1783, allowing Black residents there to live freely, often alongside members of the Wampanoag tribe, which had existed there for thousands of years before colonization and helped those who escaped from other states settle there.
After emancipation, newly freed Black people fled north, with some finding agricultural work on Martha’s Vineyard and building homes in Oak Bluffs. During the early 20th century, the neighborhood became a haven for middle-class Black travelers seeking refuge from racial segregation, eventually attracting celebrities like singer Lena Horne, leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Adam Clayton Powell, and upwardly mobile Black American families.
Locations like Inkwell Beach and the Shearer Cottage, though created out of the forces of racism, have become sites steeped in history. The Ralph Lauren campaign launches as “Black August” approaches, with events like HBCU Legacy Week and the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival.
For longtime Martha’s Vineyard visitors like Wesley, there were concerns about how the designer would “respect” this legacy.
But it helps that the collection was conceived five years ago under Ralph Lauren creative director James M. Jeter, a Morehouse College graduate, and Dara Douglas, a Spelman alumna and the company’s brand and product lead for design with intent. The collection, inspired by the traditions and fashions of HBCU campus communities and launched in 2022, was the first time Ralph Lauren curated a campaign with an all-Black creative team and cast.
