A Popular Shirt Tale

Few garments have as firm a claim on the title of fashion classic as the polo shirt, or, as Ralph Lauren calls it, the Polo shirt. The exact origin of the knitted-cotton, soft-collar shirt with a floppy tail is unknown, but its widely recorded debut came in 1893, when it was worn by polo players at the swank Hurlingham Club, near Buenos Aires. Compared with traditional British polo wear of the era, the new tops were cooler and less restrictive. In 1920 one of Argentina's polo stars, Lewis Lacey, opened a sports shop in Buenos Aires, where he sold the shirt embossed with the logo of a player astride a pony. Within a few years moneyed gentry began donning custom-made polo shirts as leisure wear on the French Riviera and at other international watering spots.

In 1933 French Tennis Star Rene Lacoste, known as "le Crocodile" for his snappy style of play, began producing a polo shirt with a crocodile logo on the breast. Lacoste's garment was first marketed in the U.S. in 1951 under the name of a famous English tailor, Jack Izod. The Izod Lacoste shirt quickly became an American standard. In 1972 Lauren introduced a version featuring his own polo-player motif. Polo/Ralph Lauren claims to sell about 4 million of the items annually. Izod Lacoste's U.S. manufacturer is not forthcoming with sales figures, but industry analysts say the older shirt is more popular.

Last year the shirt saga came full circle. Polo/Ralph Lauren discovered that a Buenos Aires haberdasher, Alberto Vannucci, was selling shirts with a polo-player logo. The firm fired off a letter to Vannucci accusing him of copying its trademark. The clothier replied that his logo, which depicts a polo player from a different angle than Lauren's does, was designed in 1920 by none other than Lewis Lacey. Polo/Ralph Lauren nonetheless filed suit in Buenos Aires, charging Vannucci with trademark similarity. The case is still in court.