This week, we take a look at the preponderance of rugby shirts on the runways and in fall lookbooks, answering the question of why this prep staple is suddenly everywhere.
Get ready to see bold stripes and floppy white collars everywhere in the next year. The rugby shirt has become one of the hottest items in fashion.
Over the last month, the number of rugby shirts on runways, worn by celebrities and released by brands at every price point has reached a critical mass. High-end versions of the rugby shirt were shown by the likes of Gucci and Zankov at Milan and New York Fashion Week, respectively. And celebrities like Gigi Hadid and Rihanna have been photographed in classic rugby shirts, leading to roundups and gift guides with headlines like “Rihanna and Gigi Hadid Convinced Me to Try the Cool-Girl Fall Trend That’s on Sale From $18.”
And rugby shirts are in heavy rotation at prep-adjacent brands that popularized them, like Brooks Brothers and J. Crew, both of which are seeing a resurgence right now, coinciding with renewed interest in prep style.
So what is it about the rugby shirt that’s causing it to make waves?
According to Jackie Swanson, managing partner at Gartner Consulting, the rugby shirt sits at a perfect intersection of several trends that make it appealing to both consumers and brands.
“[Rugby shirts are] recognizable enough that consumers immediately understand them, fresh enough to create a reason to buy, and versatile enough for retailers to sell them across multiple customer segments and price points,” she said. “From a retail strategy perspective, the interesting story is how brands are creating newness without asking consumers to take a huge fashion risk.”
Swanson said that, as customers are being more selective with their discretionary purchases, familiar silhouettes have an advantage.
“Rugby shirts already have established fashion codes around prep, collegiate style and sportswear,” she said. “A retailer can change the stripe, color, fabrication, fit or styling, and create something that feels new without having to teach the customer how to wear it.”
The love for rugby shirts isn’t a top-down phenomenon. Data from LTK provided to Glossy shows that consumers are organically drawn to rugby shirts in greater numbers. The data is from LTK’s October Most Loved list, which collects the most desirable fashion products based on what people are searching for and clicking on LTK’s platform.
LTK found that searches for “rugby shirt” increased by 750% over the last month, and clicks on American Eagle’s striped rugby shirt increased by 142% in the same period. The American Eagle rugby shirt is one of the six most desired items on LTK for October.
David Ratmoko, a fashion photographer, model and founder of the Swiss modeling agency Metro Models, told Glossy he’s seen an uptick in bookings for rugby shirt photoshoots for his models in recent months, particularly over the last two seasons of the fashion calendar.
“My read is that the athleisure cycle ran its course,” Ratmoko said. “People get tired of trends faster than they get tired of clothes. So after athleisure had its run, consumers looked for casual items of greater visual interest than just a plain sweatshirt. Rugby shirts tick all the right boxes here. Casual enough to wear but with the added benefit of historical visual interest.”
The rugby shirt resurgence comes at a time when all sorts of preppy staples are making a comeback. Oxford shirts, navy blazers and Harrington jackets are all back in style, while both preppy legacy brands like Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren and newcomers like Pink Palm Puff are seeing their revenues soar.
Brooks Brothers, another preppy icon, is also in the middle of a comeback. The brand’s creative director, Michael Bastian, told Glossy that the classic design of a rugby shirt is a good way to get people into the brand before showing them the rest of the catalog. Brooks Brothers’ recent collection, shown off at this season’s New York Fashion Week, made heavy use of the rugby shirt silhouette, both in classic forms and twisted with graphic prints overlaid on the stripes.
“A lot of times, people will start with the brand with a rugby shirt, or something else classic like a polo shirt,” Bastian said. “And then you get them as a customer. Men, in particular, are very loyal, and once they know a brand has what they like, they’ll stick with it.”
But Bastian said rugby shirts are selling across the gender lines.
“We see a lot of girls in the office wearing the men’s rugby,” he said. “We’ve been making more smalls and extra smalls of the men’s rugby because we know women are buying them. Maybe we don’t even do the women’s rugby because we know she’s going to buy the men’s version anyway.”
News to know
- Shein’s shares sunk to a record low after its first earnings report as a publicly traded company. The brand reported a 53% drop in operating income for the first half of the year, leading to low investor confidence.
- Luca de Meo, CEO of Kering, said on Wednesday that Italy is still central to Kering’s manufacturing and business. De Meo was fielding questions from Reuters driven by the news that Gucci had moved some sneaker production from Italy to China, but de Meo said this was an isolated change and doesn’t reflect a broader shift away from Italian manufacturing.
- Zara continued a collaboration with designer John Galliano this week, showing an installation of work designed by Galliano at Paris Fashion Week. The two-year collaboration was announced in March, before Galliano’s Met Gala retrospective was pulled in light of his anti-semitic comments from 2010.
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