Yes..both were fashion icons in their time.
You can get either for $35-$40, these days.
Which is still too much. Walmart has similiar for less than $15.
It’s all fast fashion. The nature of the material means it won’t fit well for very long.
We have all seen the guy wearing one misshapen and too short in the back.
It’s a glorified t-shirt.
While they are often on sale, the retail price on the classic version by both brands is over $100.
For certain definitions of “similar”, sure. They sort of look the same. The collars of all of them can sometimes get wonky, but the fabric and construction of the two higher end brands are worlds apart from what you can get at Walmart.
Again, the collars of my RLs definitely get creased in strange ways, but the rest of the shirt holds its shape wonderfully. No butt cracks visible here. I do eventually throw away my polos, but it’s typically after well over 200 washings, at which point they finally get a tiny hole around the neckline, placket, or sleeve.
No, it’s actually nothing like that, and I have what are truly glorified t-shirts (thanks Duluth Trading!). They are comfy as hell and last a very long time, but they are never confused for a polo.
Both Ralph Lauren and Izod Lacoste make classic polos that are overpriced. With that said, they are still vastly better than cheap ass polos from Walmart.
You’re definitely shopping in the wrong places.
I priced about 2 doz of each on Amazon. $19-$39. Name brand Izod and Polo.
If you just gotta have the applique.
But, yeah. You do you.
Can you post a single link to a $19 Ralph Lauren Classic Polo shirt on Amazon? One that is shipped and sold by Amazon to reduce the likelihood of forgeries. There are tons of forgeries of these things, such as “Breakaway Reversible” brand. They even blur the logo in the closeups.
Yes, I wore them all through middle school and high school.
My beloved grandmother doted on me and would send me several Izod shirts every fall on my birthday. I wore them to school daily, pretty much like a uniform.
At some point I switched over to Ralph Lauren Polo shirts. In warm weather months, I still wear one of these to work every day.
I never wore one. Never realized that it was really a crocodile on what everyone called “alligator shirts.”
But I had a shirt that might’ve looked like one at first glance. Closer inspection showed that the critter on the lapel was the legless frog from a sick National Lampoon cartoon (by Sam Gross).
I also had a T shirt that showed an alligator wearing a shirt emblazoned with a preppie.
I went to a preppy high school and the rich kids wore Izods and topsiders.
As I didn’t have the budget, I tried to fake it by wearing PC Penny’s off brand polo shirts but the rich kids let me know I wasn’t fooling anyone.
There is a thread about how to increase the birth rate. In the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, there were a lot of families like ours, middle class but many kids, and we didn’t have the budget for Izods for all five of us.
Note that the classic crocodile shirts are Lacoste today though forty years ago when I was in school they were Izod Lacoste. They have been separate companies since 1993.
A common fashion piece now is the Vineyard Vines shirts with their whale logo in the place of the Izod crocodile. Black Dog has similar polos with their little logo. It’s a pretty common format for shirts now, probably all tied back to Izod.
And the quality of the expensive brand shirts is noticeably better than the fast fashion brands. They wear better and last longer.
See, that’s not clear to me from a casual look at the expensive shirts in the store. I might understand the high price point if that was clear.
Also Le Tigre with its tiger.
I’m pretty sure my dad had one.
What were we they thinking? What a ridiculous trend.
mmm
I had an Izod with the croc when I was pretty young. Not sure how old, teens maybe, musta been a small. I’ve had similar shirts over the years with some kind of little logo on them but I don’t think any were the Real McCoy.
i prefered the abercrombie moose, until that company went off the rails. i then moved to l l bean. i did have some izod things only after they hit the sales.
i do like the polo bear but i am not paying that much for it! yowsa! henry the sheep from brooks brothers is fun. once again only on sales.
I agree that it’s not clear from a casual look. Look closer (or own both the good brands and knockoffs) and you’ll notice differences. If you look at the inside, you’ll notice a cleaner stitch on the higher end shirts. No stray threads, denser, more consistent stitching, and more care taken with obvious wear points such as button holes. The fabric of higher end brands is pretty obviously of better quality when put side by side with an off brand. At the end of the day, owning them for years is the best method of determining the difference.
I will happily admit that they are probably overpriced, even with the improved quality, but I hate clothes shopping so I’ll pay extra for stuff that doesn’t crap out on me after a dozen washes.
My dad was an Original Penguin wearer back in the 70s
I had a couple of Lacoste shirts, with the crocodile, in the '80s or '90s, though they weren’t polo shirts – IIRC, one was a long-sleeved casual shirt, and the other was a pullover sweater.
I’ve owned a lot of polo shirts over the decades, though none were Lacoste or Ralph Lauren; they were probably all store brands. I distinctly recall a couple of them, that I bought at JC Penney (I think) in the early '90s, which had embroidered logos that looked a lot like the RL polo player; when you looked closer, it was a guy on a horse with a lance, and the brand name was “Knights of the Round Table.”
Note that Izod shirts aren’t the ones with the crocodile logo; those are Lacoste. List price for Izod polo shirts is fifty bucks while the Lacoste polo shirts (with the crocodile) have a list price of $110-145.
This is true. I’d get tired of some things before they wore out.
I never had a Lacoste shirt, but I had several RL Polo shirts. So comfortable. Great cotton weave. And they wore like iron and kept their shape after numerous washings. I don’t wear any now, because I finally realized polo shirts aren’t all that flattering on me.
Oh, and I always tried to shop sales. I’d get my polos for half price typically.