Reintroducing the rugby shirt: How fashion has fallen in love with a new type of sportswear

Fashion has a clever way of co-opting things and making them one of its own. For the basis of fashion is reinterpretation – this process of constant renewal sees utilitarian items imbued with new meaning. And this season, it’s the humble rugby shirt that has been thus reinterpreted. Consider this a slow-burn trend that has been gathering momentum since Louis Vuitton sent oodles of the things down their AW22 catwalk.

Obviously, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen rugby shirts reappropriated as fashion's item du jour. It was in the 1950s that the rugby shirt became a staple of casualwear, worn by fans to games to show support for those on the field but also as a more comfortable version of the classic Oxford shirt. It had the smartness of the latter’s collar without its stiffness.

Western society is obsessed with nothing more than sport, other than maybe social class. And the rugby shirt is the ultimate amalgamation of these – traditionally a sport played by the privately-educated, a rugby shirt still today speaks of public schools (see Prince Harry in a traffic-stopping orange and purple rugby at Eton in 2001), of rosy-cheeked Hooray Henrys in Parsons Green pubs. American fashion took up the rugby as part of the preppy aesthetic post-1963 when This Sporting Life – a defining film of the British New Wave that follows a rugby star – altered them to its appeal.

But the rugby shirt separates itself from the likes of pearl necklaces and penny loafers in the fact that it combines its reeking of privilege with a subversiveness. It is often said that rugby is a ‘hooligan’s sport played by gentlemen’, so there’s an inherent nod to a decorum-busting fearlessness in wearing a rugby. History’s rebels have used this to their advantage. For a photoshoot with Françoise Hardy in 1965, Mick Jagger wore a black and mustard striped rugby. Jagger removed the rugby from its expected context by juxtaposing it with its sartorial antitheses – washed black jeans and tailored black blazer. An offbeat pairing that demanded the viewer to look again. Suddenly, the rugby was more punk than prep.

Working class artist David Hockney did a similar thing, also in the ‘60s – rugbies with stripes in gloriously-clashing colours became something of a uniform for him. Then Snoop Dogg appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1994 wearing a rugby emblazoned with the name of the father of the American prep movement – Tommy Hilfiger. By wearing an item synonymous with the privilege of Ivy League preppies, Snoop’s choice made a bold statement about power, but – most importantly – those denied access to it. He had manipulated the unwritten codes of class to make us double take and reconsider our prejudice. The base level question his outfit made us ask, ‘why should rugby shirts be the sole sartorial reserve of the privileged?’ and was symptomatic of a much wider one: ‘who has access to other, much more important, privileges - and why?’

Source : Goodhousekeeping.com