Polo's Origin Story: A Single Tie Drawer in the Empire State Building

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In 1967 a 28-year-old designer was working for the tie maker Beau Brummell, selling wide neckties out of a single drawer in a showroom in the Empire State Building and delivering them to stores himself. He persuaded the company's president to let him launch his own menswear line, named it Polo in 1968, and in 1969 won an exclusive deal with Bloomingdale's in Manhattan, which gave him his own in-store shop, the first time it had done so for a designer. In 1971 he put a small polo player emblem on the cuff of a line of tailored women's shirts, and in 1972 he opened his first freestanding store on Rodeo Drive and released the short sleeve cotton logo shirt in 24 colors.

He dressed Robert Redford, including a pink suit, for The Great Gatsby in 1974, and Diane Keaton and Woody Allen for Annie Hall in 1977. In 1978 he became the first designer to launch men's and women's fragrances at once, opened in London in 1981 and took over the Rhinelander Mansion in New York in 1986. The company went public in 1997. It fought parodies and sued Levi Strauss, but an unrelated company owns the Polo trademark in South Africa. After nearly 50 years he stepped down as CEO in 2015 while staying executive chairman and chief creative officer; Stefan Larsson left in 2017 over differences in vision, and Patrice Louvet took over.

• The polo player logo was inspired by a real player named Benny Gutierrez.
• A 1984 parody horse shirt case was settled out of court, with the maker agreeing to stop.
• In 2009 the company apologized for digitally thinning a photo of model Filippa Hamilton.
• It dropped the Cowichan name from sweaters in 2015 after complaints from the Cowichan Tribes.
• In 2023 a Canadian ombudsperson and European researchers investigated allegations of Uyghur forced labor in its supply chain.