Rene Lacoste, father of the original polo shirt.
August 19th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
The polo shirt is an all-encompassing term for a knit shirt with a collar and placket. It is exactly the same as a golf or tennis shirt. Rene Lacoste, the great French tennis player, designed the original polo to be more comfortable and the results were obviously good because he won the French Open seven times!
Lacoste Polos
Lacoste debuted his polo shirt at the 1926 US Open and by 1927 he had added the now famous crocodile to the left breast of the shirts. The press had dubbed him the “Alligator”, a name which he liked. Up until then tennis players wore a white woven dress shirt , oftentimes with a tie. By 1972 Ralph Lauren (at that time still Ralph Lifschitz) added a polo shirt to his line of clothing. And, of course, it carried his now long famous “polo” emblem which only reinforced the notion that it was a polo shirt (even though it had been commonly worn in tennis long before it became part of the polo uniform).
The most common type of fabric used is a cotton pique which is a mesh design. This allows the shirt to breathe and it adds a bit of texture. In more recent years an interlock or jersey knit has become popular. It is often softer than a pique and a bit lighter in weight. Interlock polos from Peru have enhanced the popularity because the yarn is a long staple pima cotton and therefore renowned for its luster and soft hand. A dressier, more elegant polo was popularized by the Bobby Jones Collection in the early 1990′s. They began to design and manufacture a polo in Italy using only the finest Egyptian cotton which is even a longer staple than pima cotton. The yarn is double mercerized (Filo di Scozia in Italian) before it is dyed, giving it a sheen or added luster. Very fine gauge cotton is used, usually 80′s or 100′s two-ply yarn, resulting in a lightweight jersey polo. A true Italian made double mercerized polo carries a certificate with a hologram denoting its origin.
In the last few years active wear has popularized a new kind of polo, using synthetic or synthetic blended yarns. Led by Nike and Addidas polo shirts now have “moisture wicking” properties thanks to their being made from polyester or polyester blended yarns. Classic companies such as Ben Hogan and Bobby Jones have used a cotton polyester blend to bridge the divide, producing a polo which has performance characteristics with a more traditional feel. When a polo is made with synthetic yarns (polyester, polynosic and nylon being the most popular) it has a decidedly cool feel. Polos made with cotton yarns (excluding those made with double mercerized cotton) have a warm hand. Among polo manufacturers Marbus remains the only company we know who has not bowed to this new trend, still making all of their polos from the finest “filo di Scozia” cotton yarns.
Whether these performance polos actually perform better is open to debate and yet one thing is perfectly clear. In a few years fashion will dictate that something new occurs so that we can find something else to replace what we have in our closets. And why not since men have so few fashion options!
