I have decided that the polo shirt(irregardless if it is made by Ralph Lauren) is the worse article of clothing in common usage today.
[ul]
[li]Polo shirts are too fancy to be casual and too casual to be fancy[/li]
[li]Depending on your age, build and whatnot, they make you look like some combination of a preppy frat jock named Chip, a gay dude (also possibly named Chip), a middle-aged soccer dad (Chip Sr.) or a Best Buy employee (Hello my name is Chip)[/li]
[li]You can’t wear them to a job interview[/li]
[li]They are generally too casual for any work environment where people wear dress pants[/li]
[li]They look nerdy tucked in and sloppy when untucked[/li]
[li]If you are wearing them casually with jeans or shorts you might as well wear a collarless t-shirt[/li]
[li]If you need to get dressed up you might as well wear a long-sleeve dress shirt[/li]
[li]The extra large logos which appear to be the style just make you look like an extra large douche[/li]
[li]They only ever really seem to look good on the 6’2" super thin catalog model out on some golf course in the Hamptons where the photo shoot took place[/li][/ul]
I think they’re cute if you’re going for a self-aware douchebag look, male or female. I wear a tight vintage one with khaki short shorts and knee socks, maybe some Wayfarers. It’s essential to the look!
But yeah, any guy who tries to dress one up usually ends up looking like Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
Has the saggy jeans fad finally faded in your corner of heaven? Because I’ll take two layered polos in contrasting fruit-inspired shades with both collars popped if you will just end the saggy jeans thing right here and now, forever.
I have three that I have for work. One’s a red one that isn’t horrible, but the other two are white, and I’m supposed to iron on a logo on the front and back. I shudder to think what it’ll look like. TPTB at my job don’t mind the iron-on logo thing, but heaven forfend we iron the logo onto a nice, quality t-shirt. Or that they should provide us with the clothing they want us to wear on the job, instead of making us look like douchebags.
And no, I don’t pop the collar. And I wear them one at a time.
100% agreed, and I’m a woman working in IT so I see them every.damned.day. My fiance, also in IT, has a closetful of them and I’m trying to figure out the way to subtly move him over to actual nice shirts without sounding like a harpy criticizing how he dresses.
The first thing I think of anyone I see wearing a polo shirt is “tool”.
They’re stupid, and ugly. Kids have to wear them as part of school uniforms, and adults have to wear them as part of work uniforms. Why would an adult choose to wear a shirt that is a uniform shirt to a lot of people?
The next worst one I saw today, on the “Today” show or somesuch morning show. They were voting on “America’s best-dressed man” or something, with 5 guys getting voted on. Did either of the two most smartly dressed guys place in first? No. The guy who won was wearing a tweed jacket over a RUGBY SHIRT over* ANOTHER SHIRT AND TIE!!*
WTF? Just because no one’s done that before and been serious about it doesn’t mean it’s fashion-forward. It’s just stupid. And hot. Maybe the first layer is a dickie - that would be uber-tool!
Honestly. If that guy showed up at my door expecting me to go out in public on a date or something, I’d make him take one of the shirts off. Not sure why he didn’t add a vest to the layers just to make it extra-special!
They don’t have that “mesh” texture that most polo shirts do, and of course they’re long-sleeved. The ones I liked actually have a different fabric than ones that I tried more recently, but that doesn’t show up in the picture anyway. I contacted Lands’ End about it and they insisted there was no change.
I’m interested to know that a person can be reliably identified as a tool simply by whether or not one wears a casual shirt with a collar. I don’t really give a shit, I like polos better than T-shirts, so deal. Or not, as the case may be. I’ll keep wearing 'em, and you can keep calling me a tool, even though you know sweet fuck all about me.
Of course, I sometimes like button-down, pinpoint-oxford dress shirts as casual wear too, so obviously I’m beyond redemption.
It’s been a long day. Although “irregardless” was on purpose.
You sir, are WORST (still not right?) than Hitler. Long sleve polos make a statement. And that statement is “I should be wearing a long sleave shirt but I don’t think they look cool enough.” It’s like something a 90s dot-com executive would wear. In the 90s.
And the absolute worst thing is when companies give out polo shirts with their logo on them. What am I? Sponsored by Accenture like Tiger Woods? I can’t wear your logo shirt to work because it’s not dressy enough and I can’t wear it anywhere else because I’ll look like a dork! I have a whole closet of those shirts I’ve never worn and need to toss in the trash.
Uh, is he 12? Is he an uber-dork-hipster? I can’t think of any other group that would think it was “cool.”
Unless he’s an actual geek. A real Geek would love it and wear it with pride. The kid in the picture looks like he could be a Geek if he wasn’t trying so hard to be a model.
Long-sleeved polos are dorky, but long-sleeved rugby shirt are sexy. Why is that? (Must be the ruggers inside.)
As a female, I abhor polo shirts. The company logo shirts to which msmith537 refers are invariably men’s polo shirts. There’s a reason they call them men’s shirts: they don’t fit the female form.
I have one barely-tolerable polo-esque “company” shirt. It is at least a woman’s shirt. It has a johnny collar (Could you come up with a more repugnant term? Shit-house collar, perhaps?), which is marginally better than the placket with buttons, and cap sleeves, which are monumentally better than the sleeves with a band, and is cut in a way that acknowledges that I have boobs and hips. But it’s that nasty pique fabric. I only wear it when I absolutely have to.