Photo: Jessica Amerson
By Cara Clark
Each winter, Magnolia & Moonshine looks forward to serving as a media partner for Nashville Antiques & Gardens, a show that brings together history, craftsmanship, and thoughtful design. Moving through the exhibition feels deliberate and composed — each vendor contributing a distinct point of view. In 2026, curated vignettes of furnishings, objects, and art reflect a deep respect for American design traditions. Together, they expressed the show’s theme of American Elegance, defined by quality, restraint, and enduring beauty.
The gardens offered an equally compelling counterpoint. Lenten roses, blooming azaleas, and layered plantings created a quiet sense of movement and balance, where color and texture felt intentional rather than ornamental. We were honored to help share an experience that celebrates exceptional vendors, creative vision, and the lasting appeal of collecting, cultivating, and creating with purpose.
Living Legacy with David Lauren and Lauren Bush Lauren
This year’s keynote unfolded less like a lecture and more like a slow-moving composition. Living Legacy: The Classic American Style of Ralph Lauren brought David Lauren and Lauren Bush Lauren into conversation, moderated by Alfredo Paredes. What emerged was a conversation about inheritance and how values are passed down, adapted, and put to work.
Together, David and Lauren read less like a couple in the conventional sense and more like an American institution. If there is such a thing as a first couple of cultural values in this country, it lives at the intersection they occupy: design and democracy, imagination and service, beauty and obligation. Their presence made visible something rarely articulated — that legacy, when handled responsibly, is not about preservation for its own sake, but about stewardship.
Ralph Lauren’s story does not begin with a hemline or a logo. It begins with a tie salesman and his vision—cinematic, searching, alive. As David Lauren describes it, his father never designed in isolation; he directed worlds.
Before there was a polo player stitched onto fabric, there was a question: who is she, who is he, and what is the dream they’re chasing? The clothes came later. First came the characters, their dogs, their dinners, their quiet habits, and private rituals.
“Everything is nurtured with realness,” David explains. “In this fantasy comes from realness, and then from there, you build that dream into a richer experience.”
Ralph Lauren started with nothing but that imagination — no inherited fashion house or established blueprint — only a deep belief that fantasy is rooted in truth.
When the company began in 1967, that grounding principle quietly took hold: timelessness over trend, story over spectacle. The questions continue, deliberately exhaustive. The fantasy only works because it is grounded in the everyday specifics of a life imagined with care.
“We talk about who she is,” David says. “She wouldn’t wear that material. She’s much more rugged than that. And you start building it by answering questions. Everything is nurtured with realness. The fantasy comes from realness — and then from there you build the dream into a richer experience.”
This idea — that imagination must be accountable to reality — became the spine of the conversation. It is also the connective tissue between David’s philosophy and his father’s and wife’s work.
“Ralph Lauren has often been said to be more of a film director than a clothing or home designer,” David says. “So he's thinking about the movie and the storyline, and who is this man? Who is this woman, and where are they? How are they living? What is the dream that they want?”
Fantasy, in the Ralph Lauren world, was not escapism — it was refinement, layered patiently from truth. For a man who had never even attended a polo match, much less played, the designer dreamed that lifestyle into reality.
When the company officially began in 1967, that philosophy became a principle, rejecting novelty for its own sake and choosing endurance as its measure of beauty.
“So much of what we design is tied to the basic philosophy that started back in 1967, so at the root of all of it is timelessness. And in design, creating things that are not trendy, things that are made to last, things that are for forever.”
Timelessness was constantly reinterpreted by new generations who rediscovered the past and made it speak again.
“Somebody finds a great tweed jacket from Ralph Lauren, and they might have been made in the ’80s, and they're like, that’s just so cool. My dad used to wear something like that … and all of a sudden, what's old is new again, and things last.”
Long before social responsibility became expected, Ralph Lauren used visibility as a form of leadership.
“My dad was one of the first designers to galvanize the fashion industry in the fight against AIDS. Back in the early ’80s … he used his influence long before that was fashionable to talk about a cause that nobody wanted to talk about.”
Symbolism became a language of empathy, fashion a catalyst for conversation.
“He took his polo horse and made it pink and put it on a shirt… and everybody started to say, Okay, I guess it's cool now to talk about cancer.”
For David, stepping into the company was not about inheritance but purpose. It was about continuing a vision where beauty, responsibility, and meaning coexist.
“People want to find things that have meaning. It has to be viewed with a sense of meaning in their life … fashion is passion, and for us, there has to be a story. There has to be a dream, but there also has to be a sense of meaning.”
David spoke about constructing worlds, and Lauren talked about being born into one already defined by public service. For her, legacy is not something inherited ceremonially; it is absorbed environmentally. With George and Barbara Bush as grandparents, she learned early that making a difference was part of her DNA.
“It’s the air we breathe since we were born,” she said. “Being born into the Bush family and seeing firsthand what leading a life of public service means, and what an impact one person or people can have if you dedicate your life to that.”
She was clear that there was no mandate or explicit expectation. Influence, she suggested, works more quietly than that.
“It was never a path you were expected to take,” she says. “But it was such an early example and inspiration for me growing up that it certainly helped lead me on my path — to wanting to give back in whatever I do.”
That path became FEED, a mission-driven initiative to save children from starvation. FEED sits quietly but powerfully in everything she says. Founded in 2007, the organization’s stylish bags — from cosmetic holders to market shoppers- are a fashionable way to make an impact. A system designed to make everyday choices — like buying a bag — translate directly into meals for children around the world. Its philanthropy is embedded in daily life.
What makes FEED significant is not only its scale, though the numbers are extraordinary — over 525 million meals provided globally — but its philosophy — that ethics can be embedded into design, that style and service need not exist in separate moral categories.
David underscored that point when he spoke about Ralph Lauren’s evolution and endurance — how institutions last by staying awake to the present while remaining faithful to their origins.
“At the root of all of it is timelessness,” he said, tracing the company’s ethos back to 1967. “There’s a certain nostalgia — things that feel like part of our culture that people don’t want to lose. And all of a sudden, what’s old is new again. Things last.”
Timelessness is not aesthetic repetition. It is ethical consistency.
Lauren pushed that idea further by naming the responsibility that accompanies access — whether to design, influence, or platforms.
“To whom much is given, much is expected,” she said. “I don’t feel that in a daunting or negative way. I see it as a positive inspiration — to step into that and do what you can.”
FEED was born from that realization: the refusal to separate creativity from obligation. It stands as a working model for how brands — and individuals — can be catalysts for change.
David’s admiration for that work came from proximity. He spoke candidly about entering spaces far removed from his own experience, including packing tins of tuna fish as a safe food for the journey, then watching Lauren stir a giant pot of food — enough for a village.
“I was scared going to these really poor villages — truly scared,” he says. “And then you see what she’s (Lauren) done — what this company (FEED) has done.”
In the conversation, David returned to meaning as the foundation of everything enduring:
“People want things that have meaning,” he said. “It has to be viewed with a sense of meaning in their life. It’s not about entitlement or materialism.”
By the end of the keynote, what lingered was not a brand story or a family narrative, but a shared thesis. That beauty, when done responsibly, carries obligation. That legacy is only alive if it is active. And that America’s most enduring traditions — imagination, service, reinvention — are not preserved by nostalgia, but by being put to work.
After the show, David and Lauren took to the Nashville Antiques & Gardens show floor, mingling with antiques aficionados and gardeners extraordinaire — a brush with America’s first couple.
Photo: Peyton Hoge
