Preserving Ralph Lauren’s Golden Era

Inside Thoroughbred New York

By Katie Ogletree | Photography courtesy of Thoroughbred New York

For anyone who grew up watching Friends, working at Ralph Lauren was the ultimate cool-girl career thanks to Rachel Green. Rachel made the brand feel less like a company and more like a glamorous Manhattan fantasy.

Which is exactly why she probably would’ve lost her mind walking into Thoroughbred New York.

Because while Rachel was busy climbing the corporate fashion ladder in the late ’90s, Laird Mackintosh was building an obsession with the actual golden-era world of Ralph Lauren, from the tweeds and equestrian tailoring to Polo Country flannels, dramatic double-breasted suits, and cinematic advertising campaigns that turned American menswear into mythology. Entering his shop feels like stepping directly into one of those old Ralph Lauren ads.

From the stage lights of Broadway to the rich patina of vintage tweed and rich silks, Laird has built a world where fashion and nostalgia collide. As the founder of Thoroughbred New York, he has become one of the most recognizable names in the growing world of vintage Ralph Lauren collecting, not simply because of the rare garments he sources, but because of the deeply personal philosophy behind them.

Raised in Calgary, Alberta, Laird’s appreciation for beauty and storytelling began early. His mother and father both greatly appreciated the arts; his father was an anglophile with a deep appreciation for culture. Together, they introduced him to opera as a child, and that simple exposure sparked an early fascination with performance, design, and elegance. He recalls being twelve years old and becoming fond of an antique silk top hat he found in a local antique shop. Determined to own it, he convinced his parents to let him have a garage sale to raise the money himself. It remains one of his earliest memories tied to personal style and perhaps the first sign of the collector mentality.

Theatre would later become central to his view of clothing. After years of performing at Canada’s famed Stratford Festival, Laird joined the national tour of Disney’s Mary Poppins before eventually landing on Broadway, including performances in The Phantom of the Opera. Through theatre, he experienced the transformative power of costume design firsthand. “I always appreciated the beautiful costumes that I wore,” he explains. “Quite often, they were tailor-made for me. I always relate to Ralph Lauren in that way. There’s a really innate theatricality in everything Ralph has designed.”

That idea, clothing as storytelling, sits at the heart of Thoroughbred New York. While Laird admires classic British heritage labels like Barbour, Cordings, Belstaff, and Hackett, it was Ralph Lauren that became his true obsession. Over the course of more than two decades, he amassed an enormous archive of vintage Ralph Lauren pieces, spanning the brand’s golden eras from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Ironically, it was the collapse of the theatre industry during the pandemic that transformed that passion into a business. When Broadway shut down, both Laird and his wife suddenly found themselves out of work. Productions of Phantom and the national tour of My Fair Lady, in which he played Henry Higgins, were halted indefinitely. Like many artists during that period, he was forced to reconsider his future. This is when he began casually selling pieces from his collection through Instagram to fellow Polo enthusiasts around the world. One transaction in particular shifted his thinking entirely.

“Once I sold one piece to someone overseas, and this person was willing to pay me without knowing me at all, I thought, ‘This could work.’”

That realization eventually became Thoroughbred New York, a brick-and-mortar space dedicated entirely to vintage Ralph Lauren, something Laird was shocked had never existed in the United States before. Of course, opening the shop came with enormous risk. Beyond the financial investment required to open a retail space in New York, Laird jokes that he had already spent half of his life savings building his personal Polo archive over the years. What now appears as an inevitable success story was, at the time, a massive leap of faith, fueled largely by instinct. “It’s a really good example for me of when listening to your gut and following your instincts can really pay off.”

Today, Thoroughbred New York has become a pilgrimage for collectors and menswear enthusiasts alike. The shop specializes in deeply curated vintage Ralph Lauren pieces, from rugged Polo Country outerwear to rare tailoring seen in decades-old advertising campaigns. Laird approaches sourcing almost like an archivist or historian, constantly searching for garments that expand his understanding of Ralph Lauren’s creative universe. His sensibility also feels remarkably aligned with the broader return of expressive menswear. After years dominated by minimalist tailoring and restrained suiting, he sees modern men once again embracing richer textures, fuller silhouettes, and a more romantic approach to dressing. That timelessness is ultimately what defines Thoroughbred New York.

As the store’s reputation has grown, collectors regularly approach him directly with rare pieces and private collections. The shop operates almost like a private archive, open by appointment only, built through conversation, and sustained almost entirely through Instagram. For Laird, social media hasn’t just been helpful to the business; it is the business. The shop is not driven by trends, hype, or resale culture. Instead, it moves more like a living archive dedicated to craftsmanship, storytelling, and the emotional power clothing can hold over a lifetime.

Even after years spent collecting and studying Ralph Lauren’s world, Laird still dreams about creating garments of his own someday. But for the moment, the hunt and the thrill itself remain enough, knowing that there are holy grail pieces that have yet to be found from Ralph Lauren’s rich body of work. Because somewhere out there, buried in an estate sale, hidden in a closet, or forgotten in an attic, there is still another piece waiting to be discovered.

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Visit Thoroughbred New York on Instagram @thoroughbrednewyork.