The polo shirt is named after a sport it was never designed for. It was invented for tennis, by a tennis player who was tired of what tennis players had to wear — and it only acquired the name it has today because an American designer chose it as a brand.
That confusion is worth untangling, because it explains why the garment looks the way it does. Every feature has a reason, and none of the reasons are decorative.
What’s Inside
British India, 1859: The Actual Polo Shirt
Polo players in British India were wearing shirts for the game by 1859, and the practice reached Great Britain in the 1920s.
What they wore bears almost no resemblance to what we now call a polo shirt: thick, long-sleeved shirts in woven Oxford cloth. Heavy, hot and stiff — a dress shirt pressed into sporting service rather than a garment designed for it.
The Button-Down Collar Was a Polo Invention
One genuine innovation came out of that game, and it is still on dress shirts today. Polo players in the late nineteenth century buttoned their collar points down to stop them flapping into their faces at speed.
John Brooks, an early president of Brooks Brothers, saw it at a match in England and began producing button-down collar shirts in 1896. So the button-down collar is a polo invention — and the polo shirt is not.
The Embroidered Player, 1920
Lewis Lacey, a Canadian haberdasher and polo player, began producing shirts embroidered with an emblem of a polo player in 1920, a design that originated at the Hurlingham Polo Club near Buenos Aires.
Worth noting, because the small embroidered figure on the left chest is now the most recognizable convention in menswear — and it predates the shirt it usually sits on.
1926: René Lacoste Invents the Real Thing
The garment itself is a tennis invention, and it arrived complete.
René Lacoste, a French Grand Slam champion, designed a white, short-sleeved shirt of loosely-knit piqué cotton and first wore it at the 1926 U.S. Open. Every element solved a problem with the long-sleeved woven shirts tennis then demanded.
| Feature | The problem it solved |
|---|---|
| Knitted piqué instead of woven cloth | Stretches with the body and breathes; holds shape where jersey goes limp |
| Short sleeves | Nothing to roll up, nothing binding at the elbow |
| Soft ribbed collar | Can be turned up against sun on the back of the neck |
| Buttoned placket | Opens for air without the shirt coming apart |
| Longer back hem | Stays tucked when you reach overhead — the tennis tail |
Not one of those is styling. The knit structure that made it work is still the defining feature of the garment, and it is explained in the polo shirt fabric guide.
The Crocodile, 1927
The American press had nicknamed Lacoste “The Crocodile”. From 1927 he added a crocodile emblem to the left breast — one of the first instances of a maker’s mark worn on the outside of a garment, and the beginning of a convention now universal.
1933: Chemise Lacoste and Petit Piqué
In 1933 Lacoste partnered with André Gillier to form Chemise Lacoste and sell the shirt commercially. The knit developed for it — petit piqué, invented for the L.12.12 that year — is still in production and still the reason that shirt feels unlike a supermarket polo of identical cotton content.
Ninety years later you can still buy essentially the same garment, which is unusual in clothing and says something about how completely the original solved the problem.
1972: Ralph Lauren Renames It
For four decades this was a tennis shirt. Then in 1972 Ralph Lauren marketed a tennis shirt as a “polo shirt”, and the name stuck hard enough to become the standard term for the garment in English.
It is a marketing decision that rewrote a garment’s history in public memory. The shirt did not change; the association did — from a French tennis champion to an English field sport the garment had never been used for.
Fred Perry, another tennis champion, had launched his own shirt in the 1950s, and the M3600 with its twin tipping is still made — a reminder of the tennis lineage sitting alongside the polo name.
What Survived, and What Did Not
Almost everything Lacoste designed in 1926 is still standard: the piqué knit, the two or three-button placket, the ribbed collar, the short sleeve, the longer back hem.
What has changed is what the shirt is made of. The original was cotton because there was nothing else; today performance polos are 100% polyester, and stretch versions run up to 12% elastane. Those are answers to problems Lacoste did not have.
The tennis tail is the feature people most often misread. It exists so the shirt stays tucked during overhead movement, which is why hem shape still tells you how a polo was meant to be worn — covered in should polo shirts be tucked in.
Polo Shirt History FAQ
Who invented the polo shirt?
René Lacoste, in 1926, as a tennis shirt. He first wore his short-sleeved piqué cotton design at the 1926 U.S. Open and began selling it commercially in 1933.
Why is it called a polo shirt if it was made for tennis?
Ralph Lauren marketed a tennis shirt under the name “polo shirt” in 1972 and the term became dominant. The garment itself has no origin in the sport of polo.
What did polo players actually wear?
Thick, long-sleeved shirts in woven Oxford cloth, from 1859 in British India. Their one lasting contribution is the button-down collar, produced by Brooks Brothers from 1896.
When did the Lacoste crocodile appear?
1927, a year after the shirt itself. The American press had nicknamed Lacoste “The Crocodile” and he put the emblem on the left breast.
Is a golf shirt the same as a polo shirt?
The same garment. Golf adopted the tennis shirt, and the polo name came later still. Modern golf versions differ in fabric and length rather than in fundamental design.
Why does a polo shirt have a longer back?
It is the tennis tail, designed so the shirt stays tucked during overhead movement. It is the clearest surviving evidence of the garment’s tennis origin.
Final Thoughts on the Polo Shirt’s History
Every feature of a polo shirt was a solution to a tennis problem in 1926, and almost all of them survived unchanged. Knowing that makes the garment easier to buy — the details are functional, and the ones brands have dropped are usually the ones worth looking for. Where to start is in the guide to choosing a polo shirt.
Thanks for another enlightening and well-crafted post.