Be the first to know about the latest in luxury lifestyle news and travel, delivered straight to your inbox each week. Allow our ultra-luxe destination guides and exclusive itineraries to inspire your next vacation. Travel Diaries with Polo Star Nacho Figueras The Buenos Aires-born athlete travels all over the world for polo tournaments and philanthropic endeavors. Related Articles. Queen of the Night Cocktail by Thyme Bar. Lucas Jr. For his part, Figueras became an 8-goaler, though he has since slipped to a 6, which still ranks him in the world's top players.
For two decades he has been working the polo circuit, from Bridgehampton to Wellington and on to Napa Valley and Great Britain. It was in the Hamptons in , during a dinner hosted by Kelly Klein, that Figueras met photographer Bruce Weber, who shot all of Ralph Lauren's campaigns.
In , he posed for his first ad for the company. It's an almost uncanny match of face and brand. Lauren, so adept at conjuring up an almost-too-perfect fantasy of a certain way of life, seems to have found the flesh-and-blood embodiment of his rugged there's that word again , alpha male ideal. Figueras's relationship with Lauren is also one of unusual endurance.
For 16 years, he has represented the brand's fragrances and clothing. It's tempting to imagine that the polo player spends months at a time being photographed in exotic locales. Every once in a while we shoot a new campaign. Now there is Polo Blue, so there will be new photos. We have had blue, red, green, and black. For all his longevity, Figueras never saw modeling as an alternate career. In an interview with Peter Brant, his old polo-playing boss, Figueras explained his ambitions for the sport:.
What is this? This is a perfect bridge to help me achieve my dream and my vision of polo becoming a bigger, more visible sport. There are many guys out there who look like me—you know, brunettes with long hair. The guys who play polo, as a group of characters—if you were looking to cast the essence of machismo as a person, then you might as well go to a polo match and pick any of those guys.
You could go to a polo match and take your pick without making a mistake. But when you first started, even I, as someone who played with you, could feel a certain reaction amongst the other players.
What is this? This is a perfect bridge to help me achieve my dream and my vision of polo becoming a bigger, more visible sport. There are many guys out there who look like me—you know, brunettes with long hair.
There are thousands. So I really believed that if I could elevate my game and show that I was serious about it, then the work I was doing with Ralph Lauren would become that bridge that I was looking for to take the sport further.
The image of the polo player and that of Ralph Lauren as a brand are obviously very synonymous. But the relationship between the association and the company has at times been adversarial because there were always branding issues. As you well know, the Polo Association has sometimes shot itself in the foot when it comes to promoting the sport.
Yes, the Polo Association now has its own franchise and does its own clothing. But how can the uspa promote the sport by fighting with a brand like Ralph Lauren? BRANT: Many times in the past, people have tried to do that—myself included—but none of those efforts ever really got anywhere. The sport is still really perceived in that light.
FIGUERAS: I think the problem is that polo is still seen as a very elitist sport—and, yes, it has been around for thousands of years and has all this tradition.
I think the concept of polo that people had in the s and the s was much more accurate, when going to a polo match was seen as a great day out and great fun on a more popular level. But after World War II, that idea about polo somehow got lost. Now, people tend to think that polo is only played in places like the Hamptons and in Palm Beach. Am I going to be in invited? What am I going to wear? Polo is a great thing to do with your kids and your family—it is a great day out.
And to me, horses are amazing creatures that give you this cable to Earth and put you in contact with nature. I see polo as a sport that connects a groom from Argentina to the Queen of England—and the total opposite of elitist. With the Manhattan Polo Classic that we put together, the idea was to show that side of the sport to the people of New York, where polo was once very popular, by bringing the match closer to the city and getting rid of all those barriers.
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Previous article Next article 'Nacho' Figueras The best of a living breed. The sport of Polo has an old-world cache that is synonymous with the tamed power of well-muscled horses, ridden by vigorously athletic men, bearing down on a small white puck ball at speeds of miles per hour with long wooden-handled sticks. Adoring fans of the Latin horseman have waited some time for his arrival in a region where horses and life style are key priorities amongst the must haves.
Indeed Dubai has a strong aspirational element of people who like to experience annual events that broaden their social life and contact. Polo is a lovely day out in the same way that events like the Dubai World Cup and other equine driven gatherings bring together an otherwise highly transient group to celebrate, have fun and connect with people who love the chivalry, gloss and glamour connected to the sport. For Figueras the sport of kings has gracefully allowed him to leverage his personal talent, passion and energy for an ancient game that has its roots on the plains of Asia, but is now renowned for the playing fields of the pampas of Argentina, South America, or The Hamptons on the US east coast, where polo season mark the outdoor social and philanthropic calendar of the well-heeled.
The game was used to plan, play out and execute war strategy without weapons. The sport was later introduced to Argentina by the British in the Americas in the s.
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