The polo shirt has gone through a long and interesting evolution, one that began in the late 19th Century. The traditional polo shirt as we have now come to know it, a knitted shirt in a pullover style with short sleeves, a collar and three or four buttons on the placket, began life as a sports shirt. As the name suggests, the first sport to utilise the polo shirt was the sport popularised in India and transported to colonial Britain, polo. The white Oxford-cloth cotton shirts used by polo players were called jerseys (because they were knitted on the Isle of Jersey) and were designed with long sleeves and button-down collars to keep them flapping in the faces of players as they were riding in the wind. The polo shirt was actually produced in this state and sold by Brooks Brothers’ in 1896, when their president John Brooks noticed the design whilst watching a polo match in England.

 The polo shirt was appropriated for the sport of tennis in the early 20th Century, and it was then that the polo shirt underwent the design change that would leave it recognisable to today’s wearers. The French 7-time Grand Slam Champion René Lacoste found his tennis attire too stiff and uncomfortable for the easy strokes he so enjoyed, so he set out to design a loose-knit cotton weaved shirt (one he called ‘jersey petit piqué’). Based on the long-sleeved pullover shirt in use on the polo fields of England Lacoste’s design featured a small ribbed protruding collar which was left un-starched, short-sleeves with ribbed bands, a buttoned placket and an elongated shirt tail which would not pull out during vigorous physical exertion. He first wore the shirt at the 1926 U.S. Open Championship and began to market the design after retiring and teaming up with friend and clothing merchandiser André Gillier to form the company Chemise Lacoste.

 Ironically, the polo players discovered that this take on the design of their shirts was even more practical and comfortable then the long-sleeved iterations they used, and Lacoste’s version was soon adopted throughout the sport. By 1950 the shirt most commonly thought of as tennis attire was almost universally known as the polo shirt, and this moniker was reinforced when Ralph Lauren released his ‘Polo’ brand polo shirts in the 1970’s.

Today there are three main styles of polo shirt which stem from Lacoste’s original design. The most common, pique, is known as a durable garment fashioned in a raised (typically waffle) design. Interlock polos are made to feel soft and firm with good elasticity. Lisle polo shirts are made by combing and then tightly twisting long staple fibres of two-ply cotton yarn to form a very silky, soft hand. Since the days of the polo shirt being used exclusively in the sporting arena its use has exploded, becoming not only a fashionable piece of apparel but also a widely used embroidered promotional tool or uniform.

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