Exploring the World of Luxury

The best of curated luxury….

Latest Articles

Design Within Reach 4th of July Sale

DWR’s 4th of July Sale is live: in-stock styles up to 30% off, you can also take an additional 20% off select already-marked-down pieces with code EXTRA20, plus there’s free delivery on orders $4,000.00 and up with code FREESHIP. Everyone loves a saving opportunity. Shopping the Design Within Reach Best Sellers is a great place to start — you’ll find the perfect pieces for your home. Design icons await!

The Brits are Coming and They’re Bringing Luxury…

British design never settled on one type of object and that alone is why British design always has somewhere new to go. It started with use. Who you were and where you were headed mattered. Weather mattered. Movement mattered. The trench coat wasn’t conceived as an icon; it was conceived to keep soldiers dry, then refined beyond utility to elegance for everyday life. A field jacket built for rough use landed on city streets and turned out to belong there too. A tailored shirt starts as engineering — collar, cuff, placket, proportion — and only becomes personal in how it’s styled and worn. A knit earns the word luxury the moment the fiber, the hand, the color, and the cut all come together to create the perfect wearable song. Britain’s contribution to style is turning utility into identity. This is why British luxury tends to hold attention. The Brits are coming, and they’re bringing luxury — enjoy the curation.

Men’s Designer Polo Shirts for Here & There…

In 1926, René Lacoste — French tennis champion, three-time US Open winner, six-time French Open winner, a man the American press had nicknamed “The Crocodile” for his relentless presence on the tennis court — had simply had enough of the shirt he was required to wear while competing on the tennis court. The standard tennis shirt of the era was a long-sleeved, stiff-collared Oxford cloth shirt, formal and unforgiving, designed for the appearance of respectability not for the demands of athletic movement on a tennis court. Lacoste was a practical man with an engineer’s mind and a champion’s impatience for anything that got between him and his performance. He designed his own solution: a short-sleeved shirt in soft petit piqué cotton, with a ribbed collar that could be turned up against the sun and a longer tail in back that stayed tucked during play. He wore it at the US Open. The crowd noticed. Nobody had seen anything like it on or off a tennis court. Seven years later, in 1933, he put it into production. The crocodile that the American press had hung on him as a nickname became the logo — stitched onto the left chest in a gesture that was either confidence or cheek, probably both. It was, by most accounts, the first instance of a designer logo placed on the outside of a garment rather than hidden inside. The modern branded sportswear industry traces one of its primary genealogical lines directly to that crocodile on the chest of the original polo shirt. The British arrived at a similar conclusion from a different direction, the Polo match. Players needed freedom of movement that the formal shirts of the era were unable to provide, and they had been improvising their way toward something more practical. Through the 1930s and 1940s the polo shirt moved off the court and the field and begin appearing at resorts, country clubs, yachts and beyond. Wherever the well-dressed went to relax the polo shirt went with them. The polo shirt lived in the space between the formality of a collared dress shirt and the informality of a T-shirt. A shirt one can dress up or down — a wardrobe staple was born. The 1950s accelerated everything. Postwar WWII American prosperity created a new leisure class. The polo shirt was perfectly positioned for all of it. Comfortable and clean it became the default garment for American men. Hollywood understood and was onboard: from the Riviera films of Cary Grant to the suburban comedies of the era, the polo shirt became shorthand for a certain kind of relaxed confidence. Ralph Lauren understood the polo shirt in a more consequential way — in 1972 he placed a polo player on the chest of a mesh cotton shirt and turned a practical garment into a style statement. Ralph Lauren’s polo shirt was an invitation into a carefully constructed vision of American aristocracy that was attainable. The polo pony became one of the most recognized logos in fashion, and the polo shirt became the garment through which Ralph Lauren built his lifestyle empire. What Lacoste had done for European sporting elegance, Lauren did for American leisure as a lifestyle philosophy. The polo shirt has become a staple from every fashion design house some anchored in sport heritage, some in tailoring tradition, some in fabric innovation that has pushed the original piqué cotton into cashmere blends, silk jerseys, and technical performance weaves that Lacoste never imagined. The silhouette has been slim-cut and relaxed, cropped and elongated, rendered in single colors and elaborate patterns, positioned as golf wear and evening wear and everything in between. Explore this luxe-edit.com curation of the polo shirt at its finest — one’s wardrobe always has room for the perfect polo shirt.

Exploring the World of Luxury

Latest Articles

Design Within Reach 4th of July Sale

The Brits are Coming and They’re Bringing Luxury…

Men’s Designer Polo Shirts for Here & There…

Featured Articles

Ladies, Your Closet Called – Vacation Style Every Day

Gentlemen, Your Closet Called – Vacation Style Every Day

Get Your Grill On! | BBQ Grills & More…

Have a Seat | Finest in Outdoor Living

Dine Alfresco | Shop Outdoor Dining Furniture

Let’s Throw Some Shade – Shop Outdoor Umbrellas & Shade

It’s a Wrap – Beach Towels & Inspired Places to Dry Off

Have Cap Will Travel | Designer Baseball Caps