An oldie, but a goodie. Every summer, Ralph Lauren sets up a fully kitted-out tepee on his RRL ranch in Ridgeway, Colorado. It’s not something you see everyday, and I don’t think many folks out west would ever attempt anything like this.
The tepee is done up top to bottom in RL style, complete with leather club chairs, rugs and even an antique chandelier. That Selvedge Yard fella has blogged it way back in 2009 (at the dawn of the internet) and Oprah even paid the tepee a visit when she went interview Ralph at his 17,000 acre RRL ranch, but it’s still worth looking at yet again. Colorado in the summer is a pretty magical place in its own right, but I couldn’t imagine a more interesting place to spend a weekend. Wonder if Ralph is receiving guests? My guess is no…
Here’s the flickr set where all of these images came from, thanks JD for reminding me.
I lived down the road from Ridgeway for 25 years and can attest to the beauty of western Colorado. It is stunning in every season. The RRL ranch is up on Dallas Divide, an especially choice location.
Rumor has it that when R. Lauren first got to Ridgeway, he was interested to “re-do” the tiny town with his own funds and aesthetic. The town declined. Those western Coloradans are an independent bunch.
I drove past the RRL Ranch last summer quite by accident. I was driving out of Telluride and passed (yes another) beautiful vista. Up ahead off the side of the road I saw these very oversized and wildly painted teepees, and thought “Hmm, that’s odd….waitaminute, doesn’t Ralph have a place up here?” and sure enough as I thought that I passed the RRL signage at the front gate. Good on him for making the teepees into guest rooms for friends, and not merely decoration.
Amazing; and there must not be a hungry moth within a 500-mile radius.
I remember watching the documentary she did, was good stuff. Pretty immense really, living the dream
Wonder where those teepees were made? And the pseudo Native American furnishings?
The Ranch is a beautiful place. With great pride I say ” And that lovely expanse of grass around the cabins? I helped do that. The RainMaker in Montrose was the landscaper out there and I spent 3 weeks working for them in a summer. I’ll just say that RL was very particular about ALL the details out there.
I hope real Coloradans can bust off those stupid feel good laws forced on them by those urban liberals. I heard most sheriffs will ignore them. Good!
Someone should tell Ralph about how sacred painted tepees are in their native contexts, how the designs on the tepees are the expressions of living relationships between humans and other-than-humans, how there are protocols involved in the care of these tepees, and how one must have ceremonial “rights” to use them. His own version is an offensive adulteration of Lakota and Blackfoot designs.