From Supreme’s blaring italics to Gucci’s interlocking double-Gs, logos are the window to a brand’s soul. You can find them tucked subtly in the back of a shirt collar or emblazoned prominently on the ass of a pair of jeans. Some logos get hot one season and fizzle out by the next. But there’s one logo that has gone the distance and stood the test of time, and that’s Polo Ralph Lauren’s iconic pony.

The Pony insignia first appeared in 1971 on a women’s button-up shirt before making its way to the now-iconic polo shirt just a year later. The Pony has attained a status that few other logos have achieved, adored by frat boys, tennis stars, old geezers, Lo-Lifes, Glo Gang, fashion MFs, normies—you’ll catch everyone rocking the horse.

At their runway debut for Loewe, creative directors Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez both wore Pony-embroidered sweaters, a signal of both their American roots and a testament to the longevity of the RL pony. Stunting in another designer’s logo at your first presentation for a luxury house could’ve been in poor taste. Not in this case.

As a work of graphic design, the Pony is…clunky. (Sorry, Ralph.) Whatever poise it’s meant to convey is nullified when it’s reduced down to the size of a monogram—the horse loses its elegance and the polo player is almost indiscernible. If it weren’t for Ralph’s success, most people wouldn’t be able to tell it apart from a blot of ketchup.

But the best logos aren’t just about their adherence to the rules of graphic design. And while there are a billion logos out there, the pony’s aura is undeniable.

For Kathleen Sorbara, the owner of Brooklyn vintage boutique Sorbara’s, the pony evokes nostalgia, and her upbringing in Florida and on the East Coast, where baseball games and country clubs were tied to her father’s avid fandom for Ralph Lauren polos and sweaters. “I think Ralph has always been the designer who, no matter your background, no matter your demographic, he just reaches everybody,” she says. “Everyone’s nostalgic for Ralph.”

Part of that nostalgia, she says, is grasping for something familiar and stable. In other words, the pony’s comeback is a sort of recession indicator. “I mean, Ralph has always been here, and he’s always been classic,” Sobara says. “I really do think people reach for nostalgia when they’re feeling intense, politically.” Whatever the reason may be, the pony flies off Sorbara’s shelves. The classic golf jacket and sweaters are some of her most popular items.