Piqué polos originated in the mid-1920s when René Lacoste created a more comfortable alternative for tennis. The design features a soft collar, a buttoned placket, and piqué cotton with a grid that forms a honeycomb texture and improves breathability. The polo spread through major brands and became a bridge between casual sportswear and warmer-weather formal dressing. It was widely adopted by men and appeared in iconic public images, including alligator-logo styles and navy polos paired with dark jeans. After a period of criticism and repackaging as performance apparel, the polo is again framed as a summer trend, supported by runway influence and Y2K-inspired revivals.
"First introduced by René Lacoste in the mid-1920s as an alternative, more comfortable option for tennis, the short-sleeve top - featuring a soft collar, buttoned placket, and, most importantly, a piqué-cotton grid that offered a unique honeycomb texture and increased breathability - quickly caught on with the likes of Lacoste's namesake brand and, eventually, Ralph Lauren."
"Serving as a bridge between casual sportswear and more formal warm-weather dressing, it was quickly and uniformly adopted by men at large, a cohort that included some of the most iconic dressers in history. Clint Eastwood and Steve McQueen were routinely photographed scowling in tidy alligator-logo polos, while Harrison Ford's film festival circuits - recent fascination of every IG moodboard account - often included a navy polo tucked into dark wash jeans."
"Menswear guys seem to think that it's high time the piqué polo made a return. After a rough decade or so - the style has been co-opted as VC-backed "performance" apparel, maligned as boring, if not outright unattractive, reclaimed (now in the aforementioned knit form) as the accessible incarnation of Amalfi holiday style and tossed through the Hollywood blender - the polo is being labeled as the trending top of the summer, spurred on by an influx of runway inspiration and the ongoing Y2K mall-era revival."
"It is worth pointing out, however, that the semantics of the trend discourse ignore"
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