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The P-Wing first flew in 1992. On October 2, it comes back to Tokyo as a B, built for BEAMS’ fiftieth year.

Few logos in American sportswear carry as much weight with collectors as the P-Wing, the winged, varsity-style “P” that Polo Ralph Lauren introduced with its Stadium collection in 1992. Original pieces still change hands for serious money, and the emblem has only come back in limited, carefully managed doses. So when BEAMS confirmed that Polo had designed a version of that emblem specifically for the Tokyo retailer, swapping the P for the first letter of its own name, the news landed well beyond the usual collide cycle. The result is the B-WING COLLECTION, a unisex capsule arriving on Friday, October 2, 2026, as part of BEAMS’ fiftieth anniversary year.

Signal. What happened: Polo Ralph Lauren created a BEAMS-exclusive “B-WING” emblem based on its 1992 Stadium collection P-Wing, and BEAMS will sell a unisex capsule built around it, alongside a second POLO BEAMS drop. Exact object: the B-WING Letterman Jacket (¥165,000), B-WING LS OX BD Shirt (¥35,200), B-WING Andrews Pants (¥41,800), B-WING SS Tee (¥18,700), B-WING Long Bill Cap (¥17,600), and B-WING Scarf (¥31,900), plus the POLO BEAMS SS Polo Shirt (¥25,300), LS CN Heavy Weight sweatshirt (¥28,600), and Socks (¥3,300). When and where: October 2, 2026, at BEAMS and BEAMS BOY stores in Japan (some regions excluded) and the BEAMS official online shop. Source: the collection details and pricing report rely consistent with a Japan market rel notice. Why it matters: Polo rarely lets its early nineties archive graphics out, and adapting the P-Wing itself to carry a retailer’s initial is a far bigger gesture than a co-branded label, marking how closely the two companies have worked across BEAMS’ half century. Earlier: followed BEAMS’ anniversary-year collision, including BEAMS x HOKA Bondi 7 and The North Face Purple Label x BEAMS.

Every item in the capsule also carries a BEAMS 50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION exclusive label, a detail that ties this release to the long run of anniversary projects BEAMS has rolled out through 2026.

stir

The new emblem follows the P-Wing’s design codes closely. The letter sits at the center, flanked by wings in the manner of a vintage athletics crest, rendered in navy, red, and white. The difference is the letter itself. Polo rebuilt the mark around a B for BEAMS, keeping the proportions and the old-school sporting feel intact so that the graphic reads immediately as part of the Stadium family rather than a new logo wearing its clothes.

That restraint matters. A lot of anniversary collision settle for stitching two logos side by side. Here the house redrew one of its own archive symbols to include its partner, which requires a level of trust that only tends to exist between companies with long shared history. BEAMS has carried Polo in Japan for decades, and the two have produced a string of exclusive projects over the years, from the reissued JAPANORAK earlier this year to the POLO BEAMS logo line that debuted in spring.

The palette also does a lot of the work. Navy, red, and white was the Stadium collection’s color story from the start, borrowed from the flag and from the uniforms of American athletes in the 1920s and 1930s. On the B-WING pieces those colors stay in charge, which keeps the capsule rooted in 1992 even as the letter changes.

flow

The anchor is the B-WING Letterman Jacket, priced at ¥165,000. It is a stadium jumper in the classic sense, with the B-WING emblem placed on the chest and a navy and red color scheme. The sleeves have been given a worn-in texture, as if the jacket had already spent a few seasons on the bleachers, which gives a brand-new garment some of the patina that collectors chase in vintage Polo.

Below the jacket sits a set of classic Polo staples, each branded with the new emblem. The B-WING LS OX BD Shirt (¥35,200) is a long-sleeve oxford cloth button-down, probably the most quintessentially Ralph Lauren garment in existence, now with the B-WING mark. The B-WING SS Tee (¥18,700) is the most accessible clothing piece in the capsule.

The trousers are the shh standout. The B-WING Andrews Pants (¥41,800) take Polo’s Andrews chino and scatter the emblem across it in an all-over embroidered pattern. An all-over logo is a bolder move than anything else in the collection, and it tilts the chino, usually the plainest thing in a preppy wardrobe, toward the louder side of early nineties Polo.

Accessor round things out. The B-WING Long Bill Cap (¥17,600) uses an extended brim that nods to vintage baseball caps, and a B-WING Scarf (¥31,900) extends the emblem into cold-weather territory. The scarf’s price appears in WWDJAPAN’s report; other listings name the scarf without a price.

All pieces are sold as unisex. In practice, that means the collection spans both of BEAMS’ casual floors: BEAMS itself for menswear, and BEAMS BOY, the label’s women’s line built on borrowing from the men’s wardrobe. Both Harajuku locations are listed as contact points for the release.

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The B-WING capsule is not arriving alone. The same day brings the second installment of POLO BEAMS, the special logo line the two companies launched for the 2026 spring and summer season.

The first POLO BEAMS drop went on sale on April 18, 2026, and was built around a “POLO BEAMS” wordmark applied to Ralph Lauren classics. According to BEAMS’ own anniversary page, that spring lineup included a swing top, shorts, t-shirts, a rugby shirt, a cardigan, shoes, and caps, with small adjustments to each. The shorts were lengthened to below the knee, for example, and the shoes gained a raised, three-dimensional logo embroidery.

The autumn follow-up is tighter. It consists of three items: an SS Polo Shirt (¥25,300) with the POLO BEAMS logo in a contrasting color, a heavyweight LS CN Heavy Weight crewneck sweatshirt (¥28,600), and a pair of Socks (¥3,300) with the logo embroidered in two places, on the side and at the ankle. All three carry the same fiftieth anniversary exclusive label as the B-WING pieces.

Taken together, the two collections cover both ends of the Polo spectrum. POLO BEAMS is the straightforward logo play, easy to wear and easy to recognize. B-WING is the archive piece, aimed squarely at the people who know what a P-Wing is and what it costs on the secondary market.

where

1992. That year Polo Ralph Lauren released Stadium, a sportswear collection timed to the Summer Olympics and styled after American athletic uniforms of the 1920s and 1930s. According to END.’s history of the line, it was the first time the P-Wing emblem and the “Stadium 1992” racing bib motif appeared on Polo sportswear.

The collection’s afterlife is where the legend grew. In New York, the Lo Lifes, a Brooklyn crew devoted to wearing Polo head to toe, turned the early nineties collections into status symbols, and pieces from that era became prized precisely because so few survived in good condition. Collectors often point to 1992 as Polo’s strongest year, with Stadium sitting alongside other now-mythical releases such as the first Polo Bear knit and the Polo Ski pieces from the same season.

Photographer Tom Gould, who co-authored the Lo Lifes book Bury Me With the Lo On with Thirstin Howl the 3rd, told Ralph Lauren’s own RL Mag that the P-Wing had always been his favorite Polo design. On the street, certain pieces even picked up nicknames: the striped P-Wing sweatshirt became “the Freddy Krueger,” and the track jacket was known as “the Babe Ruth.”

For decades Polo was notoriously stingy about bringing any of it back. That changed in 2017, when the brand marked the collection’s 25th anniversary with a limited run of twelve pieces, mixing exact reissues with new designs. Bruce Weber and Tom Gould shot the campaign, a pairing that captured both sides of Stadium’s story: the idealized American athlete and the New York street kids who made the clothes famous.

That 2017 run included a polo, tee, a P-Wing sweater, a parka, and dad hats, launching on September 21 at Polo flagships and select retailers, including a dedicated pop-up at Selfridges in London. The reissues were made to the original specifications, while the new designs borrowed the collection’s look and added modern fabrics. Polo has since returned to the Stadium archive with further limited capsules, including a winter edition built around the P-Wing and ski competition bibs, but the emblem has always come back as Polo’s own. The B-WING is the first time it has been reshaped to carry someone else’s name.

fin

BEAMS opened in February 1976 as American Life Shop BEAMS, a tiny room in Harajuku stocked with West Coast clothing and lifestyle goods imported from the United States. Founder Etsuzo Shitara’s shop helped create the Japanese select-shop model, and the company, now led by Yo Shitara, grew into one of the most influential retailers in the country, with dozens of labels spanning menswear, womenswear, and lifestyle goods. The expansion came quickly: BEAMS F, focused on classic tailoring, followed in 1978, International Gallery BEAMS in 1981, and Ray BEAMS, the company’s first women’s label, in 1984.

The company has marked its half century with an unusually dense calendar. The renewed BEAMS Harajuku flagship reopened on March 3, with rivets set into the ground floor to trace the outline of the original 1976 shop, and the retailer has been releasing more than 250 limited anniversary items across more than 30 labels over the course of the year. The range has been deliberately eclectic, taking in a Champion-made BEAMS logo sweatshirt, a hybrid backpack made with both JanSport and Eastpak, and a children’s bike from tokyobike. There is even a virtual reality recreation of the original 1976 shop, letting visitors step into the room where the company began.

The autumn stretch alone has been crowded. In the weeks before the B-WING announcement, BEAMS released an Arc’teryx collide dressed in Japanese autumn-leaf colors, with a reissue of the Theta AR jacket, an Engineered Garments project for BEAMS BOY, and a BIRKENSTOCK Boston patchworked in three shades of suede.

Polo has been one of the most frequent partners in that program. In January, the two reissued the JAPANORAK, a 1930s-inspired anorak with the Japanese flag on its front pocket, first released in 2010. It came back at ¥141,900, with a matching cap, and launched at BEAMS on January 31 before a February 2 online release, per report on the reissue. Then came the spring POLO BEAMS line, and now B-WING.

There is a neat symmetry in how the year has played out. BEAMS started as a shop selling an imagined version of American campus life to Tokyo. Fifty years later, one of the most American brands in the world has reached into its own archive and put a BEAMS initial on a 1992 athletic crest. The B-WING COLLECTION goes on sale on October 2 at BEAMS and BEAMS BOY stores, excluding some regions, and through the BEAMS official online shop.

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