Hello-Hello, and welcome to a new week. We hope all of our friends are able to power up soon and start drying out, despite Irene “not being as bad” as predicted, there is certainly enough damage to qualify the storm as “bad enough,” there are plenty of people eager for electricity and a hot shower. With any luck most of the problems will be taken care in a matter of hours as opposed to days, we’ll hold a good thought.
Moving on to our primary topic, there is one thing Irene didn’t cancel.
Play officially got underway this morning, and yours truly was more than a little excited, for many reasons. One reason is the sheer joy in being able to watch the tournament, always a favorite pastime here at the Prepatorium. The other was that we thought a minor miracle had taken place on the Preppy Planet.
Exhibit A: you are looking at the back of a US Open Polo shirt from Polo Ralph Lauren. PRL is the official uniform supplier for the Open.
Exhibit B: two more official US Open shirts from Polo Ralph Lauren.
Your faithful correspondent was giddy at the sight, believing an ambassador of good taste and discretion had infiltrated the hallowed halls of Ralph Lauren and the logo larger than a canned ham had been removed from the back of the Ball Boy and Ball Girl uniforms.
Said correspondent was wrong.
Behold, the 2011 official Ball Boy uniform.
The story is the same for the official Ball Girl uniform.
It’s not as if it is the US Open’s official logo shown on the back of the uniform. While perhaps not terribly attractive, at least that would make sense, people might say, “Well, it is the US Open.” But no, that logo is on the sleeve.
So are we to think this of this as the Ralph Lauren Open?
Is that really what the the man behind the name wants to see? We could see it coming from Mr. Lauren’s son David, he is responsible for much of the company’s day-to-day operations, including marketing and communications. There really seems to be no explanation for the presence of the Ralph-Lauren-logo-on-steroids plastered across the back of the uniforms, other than a raging case of unbridled corporate narcissism. To make sure we weren’t entirely out of line with this allegation we did an online search for the definition of that word.








In other US Open news, Tiffany has announced what pair of earrings Maria Sharapova will be wearing during the tournament. (Ms. Sharapova has a sponsorship agreement with Tiffany, she wears a specific pair of their earrings during each of the four Grand Slam events.) This year’s earrings are the Grace drop style.
The earrings showcase princess-cut and round brilliant diamonds set in platinum, the total carat weight is .76. Below we see Ms. Sharapova wearing them during a news conference following a practice round.
The earrings are $7000.
Speaking of the famed jeweler, last week Tiffany did its press preview of the new leather goods collection for fall, below we show the Genevieve Satchels, in burgundy and onyx pleated leather, $1795, along with the Tiffany Manhattan satchel in navy ostrich, this bag will be $4,200.
There are some new pieces for the small leather goods group, many in that classic robin’s egg blue.
The small accessories are priced from $75 to $795. Again, these are merely a few pieces new for fall, there is already an extensive collection available. For any Chicagoland readers interested in meeting the designers of the collection, Richard Lambertson and John Truex will be at Tiffany’s Oakbrook store today from 3-4pm.
On that note, we say g’bye until next time!