Nice paint, is it Ralph Lauren?

Tyler Watamanuk on the American fashion designer’s now-defunct paint line. Daisy and Walden share some links.

This story was originally published in Prune, our free design and interiors newsletter.

In 1996, the designer Ralph Lauren, through Ralph Lauren Home, introduced Ralph Lauren Paint. Sure, it was a Russian nesting doll of branding, but anything the skyrocketing designer put his name on flew off the shelves. So, why not paint? 

The company and its sub-labels had just hit $4.4 billion in annual revenue, with 130 stores in two dozen countries. Expansion was the name of the game, and the fashion brand found the perfect partner in Sherwin-Williams, one of the most trustworthy American paint manufacturers since 1866.

"What's happening today? Everything's happening. I have the energy. And I want to be in all businesses,” Lauren told the New York Times at the time. "But every collection has to do with my own life — what I draw my own identity with."

The designer knew he was selling a lifestyle as much as products. After all, it was pretty run-of-the-mill interior latex paint, but the Ralph Lauren name and marketing added an aura of high-class sophistication, even if you could buy it at Home Depot. The catalogs and advertisements looked like fashion spreads featuring beautiful photography and elevated design; the colors were branded into collections: Canyon Road, Urban Loft, River Rock, Southport, and Desert Hollywood. The in-store displays featured not just color swatches but also Laurenian lifestyle imagery, including weathered oars, roaring fireplaces, and hunting dogs.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Diet Pepsi by Addison Rae (Spotify)

• I Think About Heaven by Christopher Owens (Spotify)

• “Coyote” Live at The Forum, Montreal, QC, Canada, 12/4/1975 by Joni Mitchell (Spotify)

• Ravyn Lenae’s Bird’s Eye (Spotify)

• Insane Kendrick Lamar-Autechre mashup (X)

• Samuel Hyland reviews DORIS’ Ultimate Love Songs Collection (Pitchfork)

• Daniel Riley interviews Industry creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay in advance of the Dirt favorite’s third season (GQ)

• Stan Alcorn on Latin America’s Spotify-funded podcast boom—and now, bust (Rest of World)

• “Donkeys are bi, crustpunk, freegan.” Some Trader Joes-centric absurdist stand-up from Chris Fleming (YouTube)

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• Earlier this week, Walden interviewed Defector’s Sabrina Imbler about their Creatures of NYC newsletter; read them here on the currency of neopets (Defector)

• Dani Kiyoko, SoundCloud curation wunderkind, goes on the record. (The FADER)

• Two tastes from the second issue of Still Alive Magazine: Jameson Rich on Dick Cheney and Daniel Kolitz on Paul Wolfowitz.

• “…according to Broeker’s exhaustive research, Foison invented almost every detail of his CV.” Jeffrey Arlo Brown with a classical music caper (The Baffler)

• Steff Yotka goes behind the scenes on the insanity that was Rick Owens S/S 2025 (SSENSE)

• Books we’re excited about; The KLF by John Higgs; Winter In Sokcho by Elisa Shua Dusapin; The Hidden Globe by Atossa Araxia Abrahamian; Nora Ephron at the Movies by Ilana Kaplan; Vague Predictions & Prophecies by Daisuke Shen (this one’s an excerpt)

• A refuge for E.B. White, Bob Dylan, Stephen Sondheim, and Katharine Hepburn. Adriane Quinlan on the Turtle Gardens (Curbed)

• We’re obsessed with the design of the Medieval Beat Machine (Teenage Engineering)

• Please read “Gloves on!” by Anne Carson. It’s perfect (London Review of Books)

• What human emotion are you? I (Walden) got sadness ☹️ (WikiHow)