Word: collar
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Alex Slack ‘06, a Crimson editorial chair, is a history concentrator in Leverett House. He doesn’t really hate collar poppers...
...years past, golfers, sailors, and other sportsmen found it expedient to sport collared shirts. Constantly exposed to rain and sun, the owners of these collars sometimes “popped” them for protection. Unbeknownst to many today, the popped collar originated with Rene Lacoste, who, in 1929, wore his newly-invented short-sleeve polo shirt with the collar popped to protect against the sun while playing tennis. With the rise of the unfriendly-to-popping, indoor leisure style of Ralph Lauren in the 1960s, collar poppers had their first natural enemies...
...conflict began on a college campus, when, in 1968, collar popping was recognized by students in Princeton, New Jersey. They erected a vast Aztec-style temple complex dedicated to the popped collar on the site of today’s Frist Center. The conflict even extended to popular heroes of the day. Alan Shepard (from New Hampshire) popped his collar during his post-orbit press conference. John Glenn (from Ohio) did not. By the 1980s, popping one’s collar had become a fashion statement for sailors and rowers—golfers had given it up once sweater sets...
Thanks to rappers Usher and E-40, who referenced the popped polos in their songs, Lacoste and its collar-popping ways gained adherents from heretofore untapped markets. The pressure was such that the lines between Ralph Lauren non-poppers and Lacoste poppers began to blur. Fake L.A. gangstas of all races began to pop their collars, whether pony or alligator, in imitation of their idols, even though collar-popping was a decidedly East-Siiiide practice...
...sitting in a cottage on Nantucket right now, watching thirteen13-year-old collar poppers skipping merrily down the pebbled roads. All of this (mostly fake) history makes me wonder whether anyone really knows what collar popping even stands for anymore. After all, collar popping can’t really be that elitist, or that horrifying, if Usher endorses it. What was avant-garde in 1929 is now so quotidien. Even though some collar poppers may still be only preppier FCUK’ers, the elitism that the popped collar once signified is dead. And that makes us non-collar poppers...