The History Of Polo Shirt

The History Of Polo Shirt

By Dominic Mariani



Isn’t it strange that a sport few have ever witnessed live and even fewer have played is the birthplace of so, many permanent fashion icons?
Polo!?
Yep, the polo field was reputedly the impetus for the button down shirt and clearly the eponymous source of the polo shirt.
How did the polo shirt get started? The great Dali Lama would be proud (not to be confused with the now defunct Deli Lama sandwich shop on the lower east side of Manhattan). An ancient Tibetan introduced the word “pulu” a name then given a wooden ball. In the 7th century the ancient Persians invented a game played with men on horseback hitting the “pulu” with sticks.
Eventually, the Persian game became a recognized Indian sport called polo. As history marched on and the British colonialists occupied India, they enjoyed the game and transported it back to England. Still, no Persian, Indian or British teams could claim to be the first to wear a polo shirt.
A less restrictive style of clothing became evident in the mid-1800s in England. Soccer players began to wear knitted shirts for games, and rowers soon followed. Although these shirts featured long sleeves, they bore little other resemblance to the polo shirt.
A 19th century fashion entrepreneur liked the jerseys, redesigned them and sold them as polo shirts. Printed ads for polo shirts appeared in Maryland in 1887.
News of the style traveled so fast that by 1923 members of the Hurlingham Polo Team in Buenos Aires appeared at a match wearing polo shirts. Shirts with a logo depicting a polo player on a pony were sold off the rack in stores in Argentina.
In 1926 Rene Lacoste, the French seven-time Grand Slam tennis champion, decided that the traditional, stiff tennis attire was too cumbersome and uncomfortable. Instead, with typical Gallic ingenuity, he designed a white, short-sleeved, loosely-knit pique cotton shirt (jersey petit pique) with an unstarched, flat, protruding collar, a buttoned placket, and the signature longer shirttail in back (the tennis tail) which he first wore at the 1926 US Open Championship.
Lacoste had an artist friend whose crocodile drawings impressed him. In 1927, Lacoste placed a crocodile emblem on the left breast of his shirts, and the American press began to refer to him and “The Crocodile.” After retiring from tennis in 1933, Lacoste hooked up with a clothing manufacturer friend, Andre Gillier, to market the shirt in Europe and North America. They formed the Chemise Lacoste Company and the rest is history.

THE TENNIS SHIRT NAMES THE POLO SHIRT AND WOOS GOLF

Like tennis clothing, soccer attire remained a discomfort on the field. Soccer players soon gravitated toward Lacoste’s invention and adopted it for their use. The term polo shirt, which previously had referred to the long-sleeved, buttoned-down shirts traditionally used in polo, soon underwent a Babel-like conversion and became the universal moniker for Lacoste’s tennis shirt. Tennis players, always a genteel group, accepted the term even though their use preceded polo’s.
In the last half of the 20th century, as the standard clothing of golf became more casual, the polo shirt became more widespread. Today, few wear anything else. Many golf and country clubs require polo shirts as part of their dress code. With minor changes in style and fabric, the golf shirt is simply a variation of the basic theme of the polo shirt.
Since 19933 it is safe to say the polo shirt is one of the standard categories of clothing, worn by both men and women, in numerous non-athletic contexts. Go anywhere that T-shirts are unacceptable and you find polo shirts instead.
Polo shirts are equally popular for both casual and business attire, at home with, sweats, jeans, slacks and shorts.