This afternoon’s Polo presentation was held in a swanky apartment five minutes behind Madeleine. Inside, the hunky waitstaff in all-white Polo duds were serving Madeleine cakes. I availed, and was startled to discover that the cake’s first impact on my taste buds was… salty. Both odd and familiar, it tasted delicious. Proust would have been appalled. Yet that salty cake encapsulated the challenge facing Polo’s design team every season: how to formulate a new batch of clothing that stays true to the brand lexicon yet hits different enough to provoke fresh appetite.

This time around Polo found its answer in Jamaica, a locale it rigged at the center of a seasonal story based around Ricky Lauren, and her many visits there with Ralph. As he wrote in his 2007 memoir: “I didn’t like the girl with all the makeup and high heels. I liked the girl in jeans and a white shirt with rolled-up sleeves, wearing her boyfriend’s jacket. That’s the girl I’m attracted to. That’s the girl I married—Ricky.”

That pragmatic eclecticism was reflected in the static-model styling of a collection that ranged across plenty of Polo tropes. Khaki three-piece tailoring with country details came garnished with paisley tie print scarves and loose-cinched big buckle belts. That white shirt was here, this time worn outside a fringed leather skirt above yellow sand shoes. A green madras dress with a diamond panel at the midriff was cut in silk and worn with pony logo flip flops. There was a series of full legged, tapered pants with a panel of material that looped from outside of the right angle up and across to the belt buckle, like a half-fashioned and inverted Thai fisherman pant.

Heaped beads, a vintage Polo Sport surf-style logo T-shirt, and sarongs in tie dye and paisley ramped up the beachiness a little. A Polo cable knit that came stitched to a full length skirt was the collection’s boldest salty madeleine. Printed cotton gardening gloves and a green-edged white cable cardigan styled like a jaunty cape above a wide-check linen shirt were other delicately applied adjustments to the classic Polo recipe.