SHIRT TALES; HOW RUGBY ATTIRE BECAME HIGH FASHION
Cutting-edge and cult designers have turned their favour to rugby shirts, says Stephen Doig
Show me a fellow in a rugby shirt worn off the pitch and I will show you a man for whom boot-cut jeans and pointed leather shoes from Ginno’s Italian Leathers at the dodgy end of Oxford Street are wardrobe staples. Except that today, we are in uncharted territory. I am as well versed in rugby as I am in the rarer examples of early Etruscan coinage, but there was a time when wearing a rugby shirt in any other situation other than a scrum-half (hold on, a second career in sports commentary beckons) marked you out as a certain kind of Fulham city lad who hadn’t quite grown out of his public school affectations.
But the rugby shirt – effectively a more substantial version of a polo shirt with long sleeves and fat stripes – has been adopted by the fashion fraternity, by way of Gucci, which, under creative maestro Alessandro Michele, has created an elongated version, with thick slabs of contrasting colour. And this is not a version you’d want to take to Twickenham; it retails at around £800. While David Beckham may have cut his teeth on the football pitch, he’s switched allegiances of late, with his brand Kent & Curwen inspired by archive imagery of the days of the gentleman rugby player, producing tops with spliced up, layered striping.
When even the most cutting-edge and cult of designers, Demna Gvasalia at Balenciaga, is turning his sights to the rugby pitch, you know it’s entered into the fashion consciousness.
Perhaps it’s the challenge – like Normcore and its curious offshoot, Gorpcore – of taking something so seemingly mundane and reframing it, making the uncool cool. A rugby shirt is, after all, inherently institutional; it alludes to wet mornings in some English boarding school and, later in life, is safe dad attire.
Perhaps the best way to wear it is to take it outside of its comfort zone; avoid all sporting overtures and instead sharpen it up, like Mick Jagger in the Sixties.
Don with sharply cut trousers and a blazer, an extension on the “polo shirt/suit jacket” ensemble that looks particularly dynamic and fresh as we approach spring. You’ll look suitably dynamic without the rugger-bugger overtures.
‘Sharpen it up like Mick Jagger did in the Sixties’