The modern polo shirt is one of fashion’s greatest shape-shifters. Born out of elitist sports performance, it was transformed over decades into a uniform for working-class rebels, suburban dads, football hooligans, and Ivy League elites alike.

1. The Origin: From Polo Fields to Tennis Courts

The shirt owes its name to 19th-century polo players in Manipur, India, who wore long-sleeved cotton shirts with collars pinned down to prevent them from flapping in the wind (a concept John E. Brooks brought back to America in 1896 to create the Brooks Brothers button-down).

However, the modern short-sleeved polo shirt as we know it was invented in 1926 by French tennis champion René Lacoste.

The Problem: Tennis players in the 1920s were forced to wear stiff, long-sleeved woven dress shirts, ties, and flannel trousers on court.

The Solution: Lacoste designed a short-sleeved shirt made of breathable piqué cotton, featuring a soft, unstarched collar, a buttoned placket, and a longer back hem (the "tennis tail").

The Logo: Nicknamed "The Crocodile" by the press due to a bet involving an alligator skin suitcase, Lacoste embroidered a small green crocodile on the left breast—making it the first visible external designer logo on activewear when mass production began in 1933.

René Lacoste actually originally called his creation a tennis shirt ("La Chemise Lacoste"), but the term polo shirt stuck after polo players adopted his lightweight design for their own sport, a name later cemented in pop culture by Ralph Lauren.

Part 2: Which and Why Subcultures Adopted the Polo (coming soon)