A polo shirt, also known as a golf shirt and tennis shirt, is a T-shaped shirt

Shirt

A shirt is a cloth garment for the upper body. Originally an undergarment worn exclusively by men, it has become, in American English, a catch-all term for almost any garment other than outerwear such as sweaters, coats, jackets, or undergarments such as bras, vests or base layers...

 with a collar, typically a two- or three-button placket

Placket

A placket is an opening in the upper part of trousers or skirts, or at the neck or sleeve of a garment. Plackets are almost always used to allow clothing to be put on or removed easily, but are sometimes used purely as a design element...

, and an optional pocket. Polo shirts are usually made of knitted cloth

Knitted fabric

Knitted fabrics is the third major class of fabric, after woven and nonwoven fabrics.-Elasticity, thickness and warmth:Compared to the other two classes, knitted fabrics are much more elastic, which accounts for their historical use in stockings and other clothing that requires changes in shape...

 (rather than woven

Woven

A woven is a cloth formed by weaving. It only stretches in the bias directions , unless the threads are elastic. Woven cloth usually frays at the edges, unless measures are taken to counter this, such as the use of pinking shears or hemming.Woven fabrics are worked on a loom and made of many...

 cloth), usually piqué

Pique

Piqué, or marcella, refers to a weaving style, normally used with cotton yarn, which is characterized by raised parallel cords or fine ribbing. Twilled cotton and corded cotton are close relatives....

 cotton or, less commonly, silk

Silk

Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The best-known type of silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity...

, merino

Merino

The Merino is an economically influential breed of sheep prized for its wool. Merinos are regarded as having some of the finest and softest wool of any sheep...

 wool

Wool

Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

, or synthetic fiber

Synthetic fiber

Synthetic fibers are the result of extensive research by scientists to improve on naturally occurring animal and plant fibers. In general, synthetic fibers are created by forcing, usually through extrusion, fiber forming materials through holes into the air, forming a thread...

s.

History of the tennis shirt

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, tennis

Tennis

Tennis is a sport usually played between two players or between two teams of two players each . Each player uses a racket that is strung to strike a hollow rubber ball covered with felt over a net into the opponent's court. Tennis is an Olympic sport and is played at all levels of society at all...

 players ordinarily wore "tennis whites" consisting of long-sleeved white button-up shirts (worn with the sleeves rolled up), flannel trousers

Trousers

Trousers are an item of clothing worn on the lower part of the body from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately...

, and ties

Necktie

A necktie is a long piece of cloth worn for decorative purposes around the neck or shoulders, resting under the shirt collar and knotted at the throat. Variants include the ascot tie, bow tie, bolo tie, and the clip-on tie. The modern necktie, ascot, and bow tie are descended from the cravat. Neck...

. This attire presented problems for ease of play and comfort.

René Lacoste

René Lacoste

Jean René Lacoste was a French tennis player and businessman. He was nicknamed "the Crocodile" by fans because of his tenacity on the court; he is also known worldwide as the namesake of the Lacoste tennis shirt, which he introduced in 1929.Lacoste was one of The Four Musketeers, French tennis...

, the French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 7-time Grand Slam

Grand Slam (tennis)

The four Major tennis tournaments, also called the Slams, are the most important tennis events of the year in terms of world tour ranking points, tradition, prize-money awarded, strength and size of player field, and public attention. They are the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, and...

 tennis champion, decided that the stiff tennis attire was too cumbersome and uncomfortable. He designed a white, short-sleeved, loosely-knit piqué

Pique

Piqué, or marcella, refers to a weaving style, normally used with cotton yarn, which is characterized by raised parallel cords or fine ribbing. Twilled cotton and corded cotton are close relatives....

 cotton (he called the cotton weave jersey petit piqué) shirt with an unstarched, flat, protruding collar, a buttoned placket, and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front (known today as a "tennis tail"; see below), which he first wore at the 1926 U.S. Open championship. Beginning in 1927, Lacoste placed a crocodile emblem on the left breast of his shirts, as the American press had begun to refer to him as "The Crocodile", a nickname which he embraced.

Lacoste's design mitigated the problems that traditional tennis attire created:

• the short, cuffed sleeves solved the tendency of long sleeves to roll down
• the soft collar could be loosened easily by unbuttoning the placket
• the piqué collar
  Collar (clothing)
  In clothing, a collar is the part of a shirt, dress, coat or blouse that fastens around or frames the neck. Among clothing construction professionals, a collar is differentiated from other necklines such as revers and lapels, by being made from a separate piece of fabric, rather than a folded or...
  
   could be worn upturned
  Upturned collar
  An upturned collar is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward.-Origins:Before the early 20th century, most shirt collars were turned up in some manner. Men and women alike wore tall, stiff collars , not unlike a taller version of a...
  
   to block the sun
  Sun
  The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
  
   from the neck
  Neck
  The neck is the part of the body, on many terrestrial or secondarily aquatic vertebrates, that distinguishes the head from the torso or trunk. The adjective signifying "of the neck" is cervical .-Boner anatomy: The cervical spine:The cervical portion of the human spine comprises seven boney...
  
  
• the jersey knit piqué cotton breathed.
• the "tennis tail" prevented the shirt from pulling out of the wearer's trousers or shorts

In 1933, after retiring from professional tennis, Lacoste teamed up with André Gillier, a friend who was a clothing merchandiser, to market that shirt in Europe and North America. Together, they formed the company Chemise Lacoste, and began selling their shirts, which included the small embroidered crocodile logo on the left breast.

Application to polo and other sports

Before Lacoste’s 1933 mass-marketing of his tennis shirt, polo

Polo

Polo is a team sport played on horseback in which the objective is to score goals against an opposing team. Sometimes called, "The Sport of Kings", it was highly popularized by the British. Players score by driving a small white plastic or wooden ball into the opposing team's goal using a...

 players wore thick long-sleeve shirts made of Oxford-cloth

Oxford (cloth)

thumbOxford is a type of woven dress shirt fabric, employed to make a particular casual-to-formal cloth in Oxford shirts.-Structure:The Oxford weave has a basketweave structure and a lustrous aspect making it a popular fabric for a dress shirt.-Varieties:...

 cotton. This shirt was the first to have a buttoned-down collar, which polo players invented in the late 19th century to keep their collars from flapping in the wind

Wind

Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...

 (Brooks Brothers

Brooks Brothers

Brooks Brothers is the oldest men's clothier chain in the United States. Founded in 1818 as a family business, the privately owned company is now owned by Retail Brand Alliance, also features clothing for women, and is headquartered on Madison Avenue in Manhattan, New York City.-History:On April 7,...

's early president, John Brooks, noticed this while at a polo match in England and began producing such a shirt in 1896). Brooks Brothers still produces this style of button-down "polo shirt". Still, like early tennis clothing, those clothes presented a discomfort on the field, and when polo players became aware of Lacoste’s invention in the 1930s they readily adopted it for use in polo.

In 1920, Lewis Lacey, an Argentine-Irish haberdasher and polo player, began producing a shirt that was embroidered with the logo of a polo player, a design originated at the Hurlingham Polo Club near Buenos Aires.

The term polo shirt, which previously had referred only to the long-sleeved buttoned-down shirts traditionally used in polo, soon became a universal moniker for the tennis shirt; no later than the 1950s, it was in common usage in the U.S. to describe the shirt most commonly thought of as part of formal tennis attire. Indeed, tennis players often would refer to their shirt as a "polo shirt," notwithstanding the fact that their sport had used it before polo did.

In 1972, Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren is an American fashion designer and business executive; best known for his Polo Ralph Lauren clothing brand.-Early life:...

 included his "polo shirt" as a prominent part of his original line called Polo

Polo Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren Corporation is a luxury clothing and goods company of the American fashion designer Ralph Lauren. Ralph Lauren specializes in high-end casual/semi-formal wear for men and women, as well as accessories, fragrances, home and housewares...

, thereby probably helping to further its already widespread popularity. While not specifically geared for use by polo players, Lauren’s shirt imitated what by that time had become the normal attire for polo players. As he desired to exude a certain "WASPishness

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

White Anglo-Saxon Protestant or WASP is an informal term, often derogatory or disparaging, for a closed group of high-status Americans mostly of British Protestant ancestry. The group supposedly wields disproportionate financial and social power. When it appears in writing, it is usually used to...

" in his clothes, initially adopting the style of clothiers like Brooks Brothers, J. Press

J. Press

J. Press is a men's clothier in the United States. Founded in 1902 in New Haven, Connecticut, by Jacobi Press, the company now operates stores in three additional locations: New York, New York, Washington, D.C., and Cambridge, Massachusetts. J. Press formerly had branches in San Francisco and...

, and "Savile Row

Savile Row

Savile Row is a shopping street in Mayfair, central London, famous for its traditional men's bespoke tailoring. The term "bespoke" is understood to have originated in Savile Row when cloth for a suit was said to "be spoken for" by individual customers...

"–style English clothing, he prominently included this attire from the "sport of kings" in his line, replete with a logo reminiscent of Lacoste’s crocodile

Crocodile

A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae . The term can also be used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia: i.e...

 emblem

Emblem

An emblem is a pictorial image, abstract or representational, that epitomizes a concept — e.g., a moral truth, or an allegory — or that represents a person, such as a king or saint.-Distinction: emblem and symbol:...

, depicting a polo player and pony. This worked well as a marketing tool, for subsequently, due to the immense popularity of Lauren’s clothing, a majority of English-speaking westerners began to refer to Lacoste’s tennis shirt as a "polo shirt". Still, "tennis shirt" remains a viable term for all uses of Lacoste’s basic design.

Golf

Over the latter half of the 20th century, as standard clothing in golf

Golf

Golf is a precision club and ball sport, in which competing players use many types of clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a golf course using the fewest number of strokes....

 became more casual, the tennis shirt became adopted nearly universally as standard golf attire. Many golf courses and country clubs even require players to wear polo shirts as a part of their dress code. Moreover, producing Lacoste’s "tennis shirt" in various golf cuts has resulted in specific designs of the tennis shirt for golf, resulting in the moniker "golf shirt". Golf shirts are commonly made out of polyester, cotton and polyester blends, or mercerized cotton. The placket typically holds three or four buttons, and consequently extends lower than the typical polo neckline. The collar is typically fabricated using a stitched double-layer of the same fabric used to make the shirt, in contrast to a polo shirt collar, which is usually one-ply ribbed knit cotton. Golf shirts often have a pocket on the left side, to hold a scorepad and pencil, and may not bear a logo there.

Other uses

Since 1933, the tennis shirt has become so popular that it has become one of the standard categories of clothing. Virtually every major clothier makes some version or variation of Lacoste's tennis shirt. It is today worn by both men and women in numerous non-athletic contexts.

Notably, tennis shirts are worn by many semi-professional and retail workers in settings where T-shirts are not acceptable, but formal business attire is not required. In contemporary Western fashion, tennis shirts are considered more casual than woven button-front shirts

Dress shirt

A shirt, or dress shirt in American English, is a garment with a collar, a full-length opening at the front from the collar to the hem, and sleeves with cuffs. Shirts are predominantly used by men, since women usually wear blouses...

 while still being slightly dressy.

It is also a favored shirt for those working outside, such as groundskeepers and maintenance workers, due to its ruggedness and style. During the 1990s, the tennis shirt became the standard informal business attire for the high-tech industry and then spread to other industries (see business casual

Business casual

Business casual is a popular dress code in professional and white-collar workplaces in Western countries. In the United States, 43% of non-self-employed workers commonly wear casual business attire. Casual street wear is the next most common work attire , closely followed by uniforms...

). A form of tennis shirt (often prominently branded with the company name and logo) is a common element of a uniform

Uniform

A uniform is a set of standard clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, security guards, in some workplaces and schools and by inmates...

 for retail companies

Retailing

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

.

In many schools that require students to wear uniforms, especially junior school

Junior school

A junior school is a type of school which caters for children, often between the ages of 7 and 11.-Australia:In Australia, a junior school is usually a part of a private school that educates children between the ages of 5 and 12....

s, tennis shirts are part of a compulsory uniform for both boys and girls.

The tennis shirt continues to have wide use in athletics, including non-athletes associated with sports in their employment, such as caddies

Caddy

In golf, a caddy is the person who carries a player's bag and clubs, and gives insightful advice and moral support. A good caddy is aware of the challenges and obstacles of the golf course being played, along with the best strategy in playing it. This includes knowing overall yardage, pin...

and sports announcers.

Over the years the polo shirt has become a favorite giveaway in many corporate events.

Thus the polo shirt has become a fashion style that can be worn with both jeans and slacks.

Problems with fakes

Because of the popularity of polo shirts there have been attempts to counterfeit the products of leading brands and cheap knock-off copies have been found on the market. For this reason it is advised that if a famous brand polo shirt is being offered at a very cheap price that there is a very high likelihood of it being a counterfeit copy, and should be avoided.

Whilst these copies are sometimes hard to detect there have been some tell tale signs that give away their rogue nature and various website articles have attempted to shed light on the matter by showing how to detect a fake polo shirt. Some of the high profile victims of counterfeiting include brands such as Lacoste, Polo Ralph Lauren and Fred Perry. Many fake items have even turned up at large shopping malls when police tracked the counterfeit stock to these locations.