Few garments bridge the gap between casual comfort and classic elegance as effortlessly as the polo shirt. Yet, because it is a warm-weather staple in every man’s wardrobe, the market has become utterly saturated. From legacy luxury houses to fast-fashion giants, everyone makes a polo, but very few make a truly good one.

To save you from collar roll, synthetic blends, and shrinking hems, we put sixteen of the world’s most prominent polo brands to the ultimate test. Here is how they actually measure up.

The Brands We Evaluated

• Brooks Brothers
• Charles Tyrwhitt
• Fred Perry
• Kent Wang
• Lacoste
• Land’s End
• L.L. Bean
• Loro Piana
• Merz b. Schwanen
• Polo Ralph Lauren
• Purple Label, Ralph Lauren
• Quince
• Spier & Mackay
• Sunspel
• Uniqlo
• Wills – (Huckberry’s In-House Brand)

5 Core Criteria for Evaluating the Perfect Polo Shirt

When evaluating a classic cotton piqué polo shirt, we rely on five core pillars to separate a truly exceptional garment from a completely forgettable one.

1. Fabric Quality & Performance

The fabric is the foundation of any good polo. Because these shirts are meant for hot summer months, the material has to perform under pressure.

• Material Composition: 100% long-staple cotton (such as Supima or two-ply yarns) is heavily preferred. Synthetic blends (polyester, nylon, or elastane/spandex) often feel artificial or plasticky.
• Breathability & Knit Openness: The mesh knit must be open enough to allow distinct airflow. Tighter knits trap heat and cause excessive sweating.
• Skin Feel & Weight: We want a balanced weight that is heavy enough to drape beautifully, but soft and crisp against the skin.
• The Opacity Test: A major pain point is thin, see-through fabric that reveals too much underlying detail; it’s a polo shirt, not a mesh shirt.
• Longevity & Washability: How does the fabric age? High-quality fabrics retain their color and structure, while lesser fabrics quickly develop a fuzzy surface, pilling, or a faded “white sheen” after a few washes.

2. Fit & Silhouette

A polo can feature the finest fabric in the world, but it fails if the proportions are off.

• Overall Proportions: The shirt should contour the body nicely without looking like a baggy “potato sack” or being skin-tight.
• Hem Length & Style: Raphael always considers total length, favoring a dropped back hem (longer in the back than the front) because it helps the shirt stay securely tucked in.
• Sleeve Fit: The length should be proportional, and the sleeve hems should comfortably hug the biceps rather than flaring out too widely.
• Shrinkage Management: Shirts should be evaluated after multiple wash-and-dry cycles to see if they suffer from aggressive vertical shrinkage.

3. Construction & Tailoring Workmanship

True luxury is found in the details of how the shirt is physically put together.

• Collar Construction (The Ultimate Test): Ribbed collars tend to lose shape and curl up at the edges over time. Raphael heavily favors a structured shirt-style collar made from self-fabric and reinforced with interlining.
• Placket Reinforcement: The button placket should be backed with a stable fabric lining to prevent it from sagging or warping.
• Stitching & Seams: Look for clean overlock stitching and look out for loose threads, especially around stress points like the side slits or hem gussets.
• Range of Motion: Features like small triangular fabric inserts (gussets) provide better physical flexibility.

4. Hardware, Hardware Attachments, & Aesthetics

The small accents on a polo dictate whether it looks like a cheap commodity or a piece of refined menswear.

• Button Materials: Premium, natural materials like Mother-of-Pearl or Corozo (tagua nut) are always a good sign. Cheap, generic plastic buttons immediately lower a shirt’s score.
• Button Engineering: Buttons should ideally feature a thread “shank” (a small stem of thread elevating the button) to allow seamless buttoning without pulling the fabric. Horizontal buttonholes on the placket are also a sign of high-end tailoring.
• Branding & Logos: Clean, minimalist styling with no visible chest logos or pockets is preferred by Raphael. Large or contrasting logos are generally viewed as a negative, though iconic, tastefully executed designs (like a classic laurel wreath or subtle tipping on the collar) can earn a pass.
• Color Selection: A brand’s depth of options, offering a wide array of classic and unique hues, adds to its appeal.

5. Transparency & Country of Origin

• Manufacturing Ethics & Labeling: We always value transparency. Note where the garment is produced (e.g., Italy, Germany, and Portugal vs. mass-production hubs) and consider docking points if a brand fails to legally label the country of origin on the garment.

How the Final Scores Are Calculated

• Value Rating: A calculation of whether the shirt is worth its retail price tag. Because luxury price tags can skew this metric, a secondary “On Sale” value rating will also be considered provided to show if the shirt becomes a smart buy at a discount.
• Quality Rating: A pure evaluation of the shirt’s physical construction, fabric, and fit.

Want to see our final scores? You’ll have to watch the video, but let us know in the comments below what your favorite brands of polo shirt are and see how they compare to ours.

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Don’t Compromise On Style Just Because It’s Hot

When the temperature spikes, it is incredibly easy for a man’s style to take a vacation. The default reaction for many is to shed as many layers as possible, resorting to flip-flops, cargo shorts, and graphic tees.

However, looking polished and staying cool do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, many common assumptions about warm-weather dressing actually make you hotter.

To help you maintain your sartorial standards without melting, we have compiled 12 essential rules to help you beat the heat in style.

1. Opt for Long Sleeves

It seems entirely counterintuitive, but short sleeves are not always a shoe-in for warm weather. When you wear a short-sleeved shirt, you expose more skin directly to the blazing sunlight, which can cause you to feel hot, sweaty, and sunburned much quicker. Instead, consider a long-sleeved shirt in a lightweight fit.

Why It Works: A relaxed, long-sleeved shirt allows air to circulate around your arms, creating a gentle, cooling breeze while shielding your skin from direct solar radiation.

2. Wear a Collar

While a basic crewneck T-shirt theoretically keeps you cool in broad strokes, it lacks one crucial component: a collar. Without a collar, the sun beats down directly on the sensitive back of your neck. From a classic menswear perspective, a T-shirt simply isn’t the most put-together look. Wearing a collared shirt, such as a polo, popover, or lightweight button-down, instantly elevates your professionalism and prevents a painful neck sunburn.

3. Lighten Up Your Color Palette

Most men naturally swear by dark, conservative colors like navy and charcoal. This summer, we dare you to lighten up your wardrobe.

Why It Works: Incorporating lighter shades yields an airy, casual, and highly refined aesthetic. If you aren’t ready to give up your favorite navy sport coat, that is perfectly fine, just lighten up the rest of your ensemble. Pair it with beige trousers, lighter leather shoes, a bright shirt, and a vibrant pocket square to balance the look.

4. Reconsider Your Summer Shoes

The Hallmarks of Summer Shoes

• Unlined and lightweight
• Crafted from breathable canvas or supple, thin suede
• Designed to let your feet breathe naturally

5. Make Neckwear Optional

If you want an instant drop in your body temperature, skip the necktie. Tightening a silk tie around your neck effectively seals off your collar, trapping heat inside your shirt.

Don’t forget your

Bow Tie

If a dress code requires neckwear, swap your regular tie for a bow tie. A bow tie utilizes significantly less fabric and leaves the entire center of your torso exposed to airflow, keeping you considerably cooler.

SHOP OUR BOW TIES

6. Ditch the Synthetics

This is advice we preach constantly, but it bears repeating: synthetic fabrics are not your friend in hot weather.

Fibers like polyester and nylon act like plastic wrap; they trap the heat your body produces close to your skin and hold onto moisture, making you feel sticky and damp. Natural fibers, on the other hand, actively wick moisture away and breathe.

A Warning on Hidden Synthetics

Always check the garment tag. A sport coat might be made of 100% summer-weight cotton on the outside, but if it features a full polyester lining, it will act like a greenhouse the moment you step outside, because the synthetic layer will trap your body heat.

7. Rethink Your Reliance on Linen

When men think of hot weather, they immediately think of linen. While linen is excellent, it does have three distinct drawbacks: it can be deceptively heavy, it is often tightly woven, and it wrinkles instantly. (While we personally appreciate the casual charm of linen wrinkles, it isn’t for everyone).

An excellent linen alternative

Tropical Wool

A high-twist wool with an open weave is incredibly lightweight, allows maximum airflow, and naturally resists creasing. Because of the high twist of the yarn, the fabric springily snaps back into its original shape, keeping you sharp all day.

8. Switch to No-Show Socks

An over-the-calf dress sock is a cornerstone of classic style, but running a layer of cotton or wool all the way up to your knees under trousers is a recipe for overheating. In the summer heat, switch to high-quality, lightweight no-show socks. They protect your shoes and skin while leaving your ankles bare, allowing a refreshing breeze to hit your skin.

SHOP ESSENTIAL SOCKS

9. Embrace Cooler, Looser Cuts

Skinny and close-fitting garments are notoriously poor performers in the summer. When fabric sits directly against your skin, there is zero room for air to circulate, and any moisture you generate stays trapped against your body.

The secret to summer comfort is airflow. By opting for a slightly looser, more relaxed cut in your tailored clothing and shirts, you allow air to move freely across your skin, evaporating sweat and lowering your core temperature.

10. Reduce Your Lining

If you are purchasing a summer blazer or sport coat, look at the interior construction. You want as little lining as possible. A fully lined jacket, even one in a summer fabric, completely blocks the breeze. Look for unlined or half-lined jackets paired with an open-weave fabric. If you hold the jacket jacket up to the light, you should practically be able to see through the weave.

11. Adjust Your Cuffs

When wearing long-sleeved summer shirts, skip the heavy double cuffs and metal cufflinks, which add unnecessary weight to your wrists.

Instead, opt for simple barrel cuffs and leave them unbuttoned. Opening up your sleeves allows air to travel directly up your arms, keeping your pulse points cool.

12. Wear a Truly Stylish Hat

A hat is essential for sun protection, but the ubiquitous baseball cap falls short. A ball cap only protects the front of your face; it leaves your ears and the back of your neck entirely exposed to UV rays.

A gentleman’s summer wardrobe is far better served by a classic full-brimmed hat, such as a genuine Panama hat with a beautifully woven edge. Not only does a full brim look immensely polished and sophisticated, but it casts a wide shadow that protects your face, ears, and neck all at once.

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Athleisure is everywhere in 2026, and most of it isn’t very stylish. But 100 years before joggers and performance fleece, men had their own version of “sport meets style,” and it was a lot more rigorous: tennis whites.

Before it was a dress code, white was a status symbol, a laundry bill, and, as it turns out, a genuinely bad idea for anyone planning to actually break a sweat.

Why Tennis Started as a Rich Man’s Sport — and Why It Had to Be White

At the turn of the 20th century, tennis wasn’t a sport so much as a class marker. It was played almost exclusively by the wealthy, on the manicured lawns of private clubs and country estates in Britain, the United States, and Germany, at a time when leisure itself was a luxury few could afford.

Lawn tennis had grown out of earlier stick-and-ball games, but it inherited something more specific from the Victorian era: a code of etiquette that tied how you dressed directly to your social standing. White became the uniform for two reasons, one practical and one social.

Practically, it reflected heat on a sunny court and helped hide sweat stains. Socially, it was murder to keep clean. This was decades before washing machines were common in most households, so wearing white meant either spending your own time on laundry (time the wealthy didn’t need to spend on chores) or paying someone else to do it.

Either way, a spotless white outfit quietly announced that you could afford it. Blue-collar workers avoided white clothing entirely for the same reason it appealed to the upper class: it showed dirt, and therefore showed money.

Tennis also doubled as a social occasion as much as a sport, a reason to gather with friends on a private lawn, which only reinforced the dress code’s role as a kind of members-only signal.

How Men’s Tennis Whites Evolved, Decade by Decade

Turn-of-the-Century Formality

Early tennis attire was closer to formal daywear than sportswear: white flannel trousers, long-sleeved shirts, and often a jacket or sweater on top, sometimes even a hat.

Showing bare arms on court would have been roughly as inappropriate then as showing up in your underwear would be today. The etiquette mattered as much as the sport itself.

The 1920s and ’30s: Tennis Gets Athletic

As the game became more competitive, the clothing started to loosen up. Shirts lost structure and weight, sleeves shortened, and jackets became less common mid-match.

DID YOU KNOW?

Lacoste Wore His Logo First on Tennis Whites

This is also the era that gave menswear one of its most enduring exports: René Lacoste, the French tennis champion, put his now-famous crocodile motif on a tennis blazer before it ever appeared on the polo shirt that would eventually carry his name worldwide.

Mid-Century: Function Starts to Win

By the mid-20th century, shorts had become the standard, colors softened slightly, and cuts allowed for real range of motion — a tacit admission that long wool flannels had never actually been practical for playing sport in the heat.

This period also saw the rise of synthetic fibers, marketed at the time as “miracle fabrics” for drying faster than cotton or wool. White, however, remained non-negotiable regardless of material.

The 1970s: Color Finally Arrives (Almost Everywhere)

It wasn’t until the 1970s that most tournaments dropped the all-white requirement, as television sponsorship and brand identity pushed players toward bolder colors, stripes, and logos on the new synthetic fabrics.

One major exception held the line: Wimbledon.

Why Wimbledon Still Requires White, and Why an American Brand Runs the Show

Wimbledon’s all-white dress code is one of the last surviving pieces of the sport’s original class-driven etiquette, and it’s still strictly enforced today. What’s less expected is who dresses the tournament: Ralph Lauren, an American label, has been Wimbledon’s Official Outfitter since 2006 and is now entering its third decade in the role.

It’s the only designer in the tournament’s history to hold that title. The brand’s approach leans into the club’s signature purple and green rather than reinventing the look, pairing pleated trousers in lighter cotton with bold striped blazers reminiscent of the earliest tennis clubwear.

We Put Traditional Tennis Whites to the Test

History is one thing; actually playing in this stuff is another. So we did — a full match in period-accurate tennis whites, tracked across a real court session in roughly 75°F (24°C) with 65% humidity.

The first outfit paired a poplin cotton shirt with tailored trousers and a heavy wool tennis sweater — the kind period players wore between matches, ostensibly for warmth. In summer heat, it did the opposite of its job: sweat was visible almost immediately, and it only got worse as the match went on.

Swapping the poplin shirt for a pique-knit polo made a noticeable difference: the slightly raised knit kept fabric off the skin and hid sweat far better than the woven cotton, though it wasn’t clear how much of that came down to the knit itself versus one player simply running hotter than the other.

Switching into full wool flannel trousers and a wool sweater for a second set, paired with a pair of canvas court shoes also popular at the time, didn’t make things dramatically worse than the cotton outfit, which was itself a bit of a surprise.

What didn’t change was the verdict: whether cotton or wool, the traditional kit looked the part and delivered a level of sweat that no amount of “it hides stains” could fully disguise.

Outfit Rundown

One modern accessory got pressed into service along the way: a Fort Belvedere reversible white leather belt, technically designed for summer trousers rather than the tennis court, called in for double duty — and worth checking out if you want a versatile, warm-weather leather piece with actual reversibility built in.

Fort Belvedere

White Boxcalf & Undyed Natural Veg-Tan Leather Belt

Get yours!

The Style Verdict

Tennis whites earn their reputation honestly: the silhouette, the history, and the quiet formality still look sharp more than a century later. What doesn’t hold up is the practicality: heavy natural fibers and full coverage were never built for actually playing a physical sport in summer heat, and a couple of sets are enough to prove it.

The lesson for dressing today isn’t to recreate the whole kit; it’s to borrow the right pieces — a well-cut polo, the right shade of white, maybe a tennis sweater over the shoulders rather than on the court — and leave the wool flannels to history.

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If your glasses constantly slide down, pinch at the temples, or leave red marks on your nose, the problem usually isn’t your face, it’s that no frame has ever actually been built for it.

We returned to Schau Schau Brillen in Vienna, this time to commission a pair of bespoke acetate eyeglasses from scratch and follow the entire process, from the first fitting to the final hand-polish.

Commissioning Bespoke Glasses at Schau Schau Brillen

Building a Custom Pair From Scratch in Vienna

Sven Raphael Schneider and Jack Collins return to Schau Schau Brillen in Vienna, this time to commission a pair of bespoke acetate eyeglasses from scratch. Optician Paul handles the fitting at the shop’s Rotenturmstraße showroom, while artisan Hannah builds the frames by hand at the family’s workshop in Perchtoldsdorf. The video follows the full process — fitting, material selection, and construction — from first measurement to final polish.

Why a Proper Fit Matters More Than You’d Think

Most off-the-rack glasses are built to a handful of fixed sizes, which is why they slide down, pinch, or leave marks no matter how much they cost. This video breaks down the specific measurements that actually matter, like bridge height, temple length, lens-channel precision, and shows what it looks like when a frame is built to your exact numbers instead. It’s a useful watch before your next optician visit, bespoke budget or not.

Highlights from this Video

1

"Wow. It's like a pyramid almost."

7:13

A side-by-side comparison reveals exactly how a keyhole bridge was making one face shape look longer than it actually is.

2

"Temple length is the one measurement most people have never actually had taken."

8:58

The real reason your glasses might keep sliding down your nose — and why off-the-rack temples can’t fix it.

3

"It either matches the lens exactly, or the entire front piece is useless."

16:25

Why the lens channel is the single most unforgiving step in the entire build.

4

"You only know the fit is perfect when you stop thinking about the glasses entirely."

19:37

Watch the final round of live adjustments, made in fractions of a millimeter.

5

"The bespoke process forces you to have patience, and that patience is the actual product you're buying."

21:21

The case for why 24–28 hours in a tumbling drum isn’t wasted time.

Watch Our Previous Video at Schau Schau Brillen

Before commissioning a custom pair, we sat down with Paul to decode the rules of finding the right frame for your face shape.

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Neapolitan tailoring is often praised for its softness, lightness, and easy elegance. But what actually makes a jacket or trouser feel distinctly Neapolitan?

In this second installment from Raphael’s trip to Naples, he speaks with tailors from some of the city’s most respected sartorie about the hallmarks of Neapolitan style.

Watch the full discussion to see these details up close and hear how Neapolitan tailors explain their own craft.

Why Watch the Full Discussion?

Neapolitan tailoring is difficult to understand from terminology alone. Many of its most important qualities are visual and tactile: the softness of the shoulder, the lightness of the canvas, the roll of the lapel, the openness of the front quarters, and the way the jacket responds when the wearer moves.

Seeing the garments handled and explained makes these details easier to recognize.

In the full video, you will see how experienced tailors describe the features that define Neapolitan jackets and trousers, including the balance between structure and softness, the purpose of high armholes, the role of light internal construction, and the subtle differences between house styles.

It is a useful watch for anyone who has heard terms like spalla camicia or barchetta but wants to understand how they actually appear in a finished garment.

Part 1: What Neapolitan Tailors Wear in Summer

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Luxe Italian Fabric Review

Linen is widely regarded as the classic fabric for summer tailoring. It is breathable, distinctive, and prized for the relaxed wrinkles that give it so much character. But NOT every tailor agrees that linen is the best option for hot weather.

In Naples, Raphael speaks with several tailors and cloth experts about the fabrics they prefer for summer suits, jackets, and trousers. Their answers range from traditional linen to open-weave wool, hopsack, mohair, hemp, silk, and lightweight blended fabrics.

Rather than identifying one universal winner, the discussion explores why the right summer fabric depends on the climate, the occasion, and the type of garment being made.

Watch the full discussion to examine the fabrics up close, hear the tailors explain their personal preferences, and discover why several of their choices challenge conventional assumptions about summer cloth.

Five Neapolitan Perspectives on Summer Cloth

Featuring insights from Sartoria Ciardi, Sartoria Solito, Sartoria Carfora, Sartoria Dalcuore, and Rubinacci, the discussion shows how differently experienced tailors can evaluate the same warm-weather fabrics.

Some favor linen for its relaxed character, while others place greater value on crispness, airflow, drape, or crease resistance. Together, their perspectives offer a broader view of what makes a fabric truly suitable for summer.

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