From Muhammad Ali to Pharrell Williams, how a single silhouette continues to inspire generation after generation.

The Birth of an Icon
Ralph Lauren launched Polo Ralph Lauren in New York City in 1967 at 28 years old. Expressed with these three words was Lauren’s desire to channel feelings of everyday sportiness, international sophistication and American informality. These ideas came together on the brand’s earliest offerings—men’s neckties—before manifesting themselves in other pieces, such as flannel suits and dress shirts. In 1971, Lauren unveiled a logo on the cuff of a tailored woman’s shirt that would come to define not just his own clothing but American style more broadly: a polo player mounted on a galloping horse, mallet raised in anticipation of a hit.
Just a year later, the Bronx-born designer took the logo and placed it on an entirely new silhouette, the Polo shirt. Crafted from cotton and featuring functional details such as rib-knitting on the collar and cuffs, the short-sleeve design combined Lauren’s fondness for <a href="https://www.goat.com/editorial/collegiate-varsity-fashion-trend">Ivy League prep </a>with his innate understanding of personal style. The result was a deceptively simple silhouette designed to be worn in countless situations—from weekend getaways to pick-up tennis games—and to develop character with wear, becoming emblematic of the person wearing the shirt. The array of colors available at launch reflected this ethos: bold, bright shades meant to fade over the years.
By the end of the decade, the Polo shirt was everywhere. A testament to the style’s ubiquity, the New York Cosmos enlisted Lauren to design the team’s jersey in 1979, a club that included German wunderkind Franz Beckenbauer and Italian superstar Giorgio Chinaglia, among many others.

The Polo Shirt Branches Out
As Lauren’s singular vision came into sharper focus and his influence across style expanded, so did the variety of his Polo shirts. First came a growing roster of colors. Then, in 1985, years before the concept of pre-distressed clothes came about, Lauren introduced the “weathered” Polo shirt, a series that captured Lauren’s lived-in aesthetic through innovative production methods. Soon after came every manner of creative expression. Designs featuring stripes, sashes and destinations. Graphics inspired by collegiate life, yacht racing and tennis. Crests and patches evoking the spirit of the outdoors, track and field competitions, and rugby tournaments.
At the same time the brand was exploring different cultural themes, Lauren began experimenting with the silhouette itself, tweaking details to offer the style in configurations fit for specific activities. Longer and looser sleeves helped golfers achieve an optimal swing. The ’80s fitness boom catalyzed the need for a slim-fit shirt. The relaxed dress codes of the ’90s brought about an oversized silhouette, with the Polo Pony embroidered on the bottom right hem of the shirt and a pocket at the left chest. By the early 2000s, the Polo shirt was produced in shapes and sizes for all body types and lifestyles—including a miniature version for man’s best friend.

Polo and the Rise of Streetwear
While the Polo shirt continued to run circles around the globe, a curious style shift was percolating on the streets of New York City, Los Angeles, London and Tokyo in the late ’80s. The movement drew from the burgeoning cultures of hip-hop, skateboarding and surfing, mixing statement graphics with an element of subversive appropriation. Later known as “streetwear,” the scene’s earliest proponents gravitated toward the aspirational world Lauren had been building since Day One, placing the Polo shirt in an entirely new cultural context. Prominent figures such as Thirstin Howl III began naming their favorite designs—“cookies,” “cross flags,” “crowns”—ensuring Lauren’s legacy would forever be tied to the late-20th century’s most significant artistic developments.
The movement continued to gather steam into the new decade, with certain designs from Ralph Lauren’s growing roster of collections becoming status symbols. The launch of Polo Sport in 1992, in particular, brought about an entirely new identity to Lauren’s Americana aesthetic, quickly finding support among influential groups such as the Lo Lifes, a loose collective of Ralph Lauren collectors based in NYC. Cast into the streetwear spotlight simultaneously were a number of other iconic themes, from nautical and equestrian to outdoors and Stadium.
Entering the new millennium, Lauren’s original design continued to evolve alongside streetwear and culture more broadly. Kanye West, the flagbearer for a new generation of rappers, made the pink Polo part of his uniform, while peers like Pharrell Williams and André 3000 opted for understated shades. Politicians from both sides of the aisle discussed policy over games of golf in timeless monochromatic hues. Once the cameras stopped rolling, actors, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Sharon Stone and Morgan Freeman, slipped into their favorite colorways. Oprah Winfrey, wearing her favorite style and discussing Lauren’s universal appeal, summed it up best: “No other designer has done this in the world. He took a single shirt—the Polo—and turned it into a lifestyle.”

An Icon of the Past, Present and Future
Today, the style is produced in every option imaginable. There’s the Earth Polo, crafted entirely of plastic bottles and dyed using a waterless process. There’s a series dedicated to baseball teams, including the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals. There are versions available for Lauren’s many spinoff collections, from RLX Golf to Double RL. And then, of course, there’s the Iconic Mesh Polo Shirt, produced in more than 40 colorways.
50 years since Lauren debuted his classic silhouette, the Polo shirt continues to inspire and influence people across the globe. And yet like so much of Lauren’s oeuvre, there’s no single, specific reason why the short-sleeve design has resonated with so many over so many years. Instead, the style’s perennial relevance and popularity is tied to Lauren’s masterful storytelling ability—an ability that allows Lauren to write his own story while giving people the tools to write their own. In Lauren’s words, “It was never about a shirt, but a way of living.”

50 Years of Ralph Lauren’s Iconic Polo Shirt

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50 Years of Ralph Lauren’s Iconic Polo Shirt