Invented by the Founder of Lacoste
“This year marks the 50th anniversary of the sale of polo shirts in Japan,” says Yumi Kawashima of the marketing department at Fabrica, the Tokyo-based company that manufactures and sells products in Japan for the French casualwear brand Lacoste, famous for its crocodile logo.
Today, the term “polo shirt” generally refers to a short-sleeved shirt made of jersey fabric, with a collar and two or three buttons at the neck. According to Kawashima, the polo shirt in its present, widely recognized form was first invented in the world in 1927 by René Lacoste, the founder of Lacoste and a celebrated tennis player.

At the time, tennis players competed in loose-fitting, long-sleeved, collared shirts resembling dress shirts. Lacoste, wondering whether there might be a shirt that would allow players greater freedom of movement, turned his attention to the jersey shirts worn by polo players, which were also highly absorbent. He conceived the idea of adapting this type of shirt for tennis.

Adding a Collar to the Polo Player’s Shirt
Lacoste himself discussed the origins of the shirt in an interview during his lifetime. According to his account, polo players at the time wore round-necked shirts resembling T-shirts, and he came up with the idea of adding a collar to make the garment more suitable for tennis. At first, he had the shirt made for his own use while playing matches under the blazing sun. It attracted attention, however, and he later established a manufacturing company with a friend. In 1933, the shirt was introduced to the general public.

The product was originally called the “Chemise Lacoste” (“Lacoste Shirt”), and its first advertising slogan read: “For tennis, golf, and marine sports.” Curiously, there was no mention whatsoever of polo. Even today, polo shirts are sometimes referred to as “tennis shirts” or “golf shirts.” But why, then, did they come to be known as “polo shirts” in the first place? Kawashima says that “when Lacoste began selling them in Japan 50 years ago, they were already being called polo shirts.” To investigate further, we consulted a specialist reference work: Esquire’s Encyclopedia of 20th Century Men’s Fashions, published in the United States in 1973 and devoted to the history of twentieth-century menswear.　According to the book, shirts corresponding to today’s polo shirt were already being worn by tennis players in Britain and the United States by 1928, and were being sold by many American retailers. The term “polo shirt” is said to have begun spreading around this period.

There has long been a theory that polo players themselves had originally worn similar shirts. Lacoste’s own comments, however, suggest another possible interpretation.
The modern polo shirt may initially have spread through its popularity among tennis players. Later, when polo players themselves began wearing the same style, polo effectively appropriated the garment from tennis, and the name “polo shirt” came to prevail.