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  • August 1, 2025

Ralph Lauren pays homage to generations of Black Martha’s Vineyard visitors in a new collection

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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.

Polo Ralph Lauren for Oak Bluffs.
Ralph Lauren’s Oak Bluffs collection pays homage to generations of Black travelers who have spent their summers on Martha’s Vineyard. Polo Ralph Lauren for Oak Bluffs

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.

Summer residents at Oak Bluffs, in the 1910s-1930s.
Summer residents at Oak Bluffs in the 1930s.Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum

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.

Man in casual clothes and baseball cap relaxing in a hammock
A member of the social circle of Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West relaxes in the Highlands neighborhood of Oak Bluffs in 1948. Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum

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.

Shearer Cottage, Oak Bluffs, in the 1910s-1930s, plus other Black summer residents.
Participants in the annual Methodist camp meeting outside a rented cottage in the campgrounds sometime after 1873. Methodist (later supplemented by Baptist) camp meetings gave many African Americans from the Northeast their first exposure to Martha’s Vineyard.Courtesy Martha’s Vineyard Museum

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.