Polo – The Shirt

My parents had lofty aspirations for me. Despite my obvious lack of athletic prowess, my mom signed me up for tennis lessons when I was eight or nine. Hatherly Golf Club, in Scituate, where we went in the summers, had some courts and a pro. I must admit I loved the gear. She got me a beautiful, white and brown T.A. Davis racquet, gut strings, the whole thing, with its own head cover, which had the fancy TAD logo and zipped up the side. I also had a wooden, trapezoid-shaped press with wing nuts that you put the racquet head in and fastened to keep the head from warping. Fred Perry shoes, white crew socks with blue stripes at the top, and a white Izod shirt. I thought the alligator was weird, frankly, but one of my friends, one of the Casey boys, maybe, was more fashion savvy than I and told me the alligator was Cool. The whole shirt was weird, actually. It was made of cotton, but it felt hard, like cotton wire. The back was longer than the front. It was nothing like the shirts my Mom got at Bamberger’s. But after the Casey kid told me it was cool, I thought I was pretty fly in my French tennis shirt.

I took a couple of lessons and then ditched. I had more fun wading out to Elephant Rock at low tide or netting crabs down by the Lobster Shanty in Minot. I still know how to play tennis, at least as well as I did after those couple of lessons, though. So it wasn’t in vain, though I’m sure it hasn’t helped my social standing any.

I am not sure anyone knows exactly how or why the knit shirt that everybody on earth owns at least ten of came to be called the polo shirt. The one with the knit collar, a couple of buttons and short sleeves. When I was a kid it was called a tennis shirt, regardless of color or design. It doesn’t look like what polo players wear; as a matter of fact, Brooks Brothers to this day call their button-down collar for dress shirts and woven sport shirts “the Polo Collar,” because the buttons prevent the collar from flapping in the wind.

I can’t help thinking that it was its association with Mr. Lauren’s label that really made the name stick. I can tell you that despite his manifest talents Lauren struggled in business for years until he found some Southern knitwear maker to embroider his polo player logo on the chest of an otherwise unremarkable knit shirt. Izod LaCoste was at this time in full retreat and the Polo/Ralph Lauren polo shirt sold like funnel cakes at a county fair. It was probably the cash from knit shirt sales that enabled Ralph to buy my father out. (He’d already done a Dozi on my dad by putting his name after the Polo on the label; Norman only owned half of the products with the Polo label – dress shirts and neckwear – even then no big money maker.) Polo Ralph Lauren owed nothin’ to nobody – except the guy on the horse. Thirty-five years later we call any knitted top, whether long sleeved or short, cotton or wool or even the new techno-blends, solid or striped, virtually anything that looks like that, a polo. In Italian it’s called il polo, in French le Polo.

The versatility and functionality of this garment make it a staple of everybody’s wardrobe. Under a sport jacket or even a suit it can be an elegant-sporty look, more youthful and carefree than the shirt-and-tie, definitely Level 3. With dress trousers and a nice belt and shoes, particularly in its long-sleeved version, it is at home in, say, the Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills Hotel or at a casual dinner party in Sheboygan. In the short-sleeved version, it is the ideal golf shirt, the very definition of Level 2, and its use can even extend to more formal environs, like church or a cook-out, when they are new or well looked-after.

There is great variety in this; too much, in fact. Suffice it to say that piqué and interlock knits, commonly knitted of a variety of cotton known as Pima, have a heft and a softness that makes them more comfortable, but, like their oxford button-down cousin, less formal looking and less likely to look dressy after a few launderings. The Mercerizing process, by which cotton yarn is made harder and stronger, results in a more formal looking shirt, easier to care for but less comfy. Other types of cotton knits, like John Smedley’s 32 gauge Sea Island and some Italian Pimas, are quite comfortable and presentably dressy, if properly cared for.    

The knit shirt, just because of the nature of the fabric, tends quickly to lose its color and shape. Mrs. America wants to wash out the chocolate ice cream her husband dripped on his shirt, and the manufacturer want to sell eighty million shirts a year, and these two criteria make everybody want to say you can wash and dry them like your Budweiser T-shirt. The result is that after three such washings what started out a pristine golf shirt is now fit only for Level 1, wash-the-dog use.

Noteworthy also in regard to knit shirts is that the old-fashioned method of manufacturing, known as “full-fashioning” makes a big difference in how they fit and feel. The best knits are fully-fashioned, meaning that the entire garment is knitted together, the way Granma used to do. The sleeves and the collar of the garment are fashioned together by knitting, rather than by cutting the material and sewing it. There are no seams, nothing to pucker or bump. Less expensive “cut-and-sewn” knits are stitched together – sleeves, collar and shoulders attached from separate pieces, creating at best an approximation of fit. Full-fashioned knits conform to the neck and shoulders with no seams, just the little tell-tale fashioning marks, if you know what to look for. And if you do, you’ll know that any full-fashioned knit shirt deserves to be cold water washed and line dried and cool-ironed. If you bought a Ferrari would you bring it to the Jiffy Lube? Cut and sewn knits are expendable. If you have bought a fully-fashioned knit shirt, you’ll want to keep it looking like new.

A final tip on buying any knit shirt is this: Make sure it fits. Yes, boys. I’m sorry, but this means you have to try it on. Because most of the American brands could do double duty as car-covers and the Italian ones are tiny. Even if the body fits you the neck is sometimes too wide, so that it opens around your shoulders, or too small, the sleeves too long (or too short.)   

            Another head-scratch-inducing sociological phenomenon is the average guy’s reluctance to try anything on before buying it. This may be akin to not wanting to stop and ask for directions, but I think it’s a bit more complicated than that.

NOTE: Renè LaCoste was a Frenchman, a famous Jazz Age pro tennis player with the nickname “le Crocodile.” He won Wimbledon and beat the American ace Bill Tilden. He and two other French players were so dominant they were world-famous: the “Three Musketeers.” LaCoste had a crocodile (not an alligator,) emblazoned on everything he wore. A smart Italian entrepreneur named Dozi decided to use LaCoste’s fame to help sell sportswear and the shirt with the crocodile, alligator or whatever it is became the 20’s equivalent of the Nike Air Jordan. Sgr. Dozi had some conflicting situation going on, though, and therefore decided to spell his name backwards on the label. Weird enough? Weirder still is the s the fact that the Izod LaCoste brand, the originator of logo-branded sportswear, was so mismanaged and bastardized that it wound up on everything from bowling ball bags to underarm deodorant, and thus lost its lofty status. Having been sold repeatedly by one failing sportswear manufacturer to another, the brand would have wound up on the junk heap of apparel history had not some enterprising French guys acquired it in the 90’s and given the famous reptile a new lease on life.