Fred Perry Polo Shirts

Frederic John Perry was the last of the British males to win the coveted Wimbledon singles tennis championship. Pretty good for a kid from a working class family at that time. The rich and elite of that time period really didn't like this great tennis champion at that time. They thought he was rough or vulgar.

The interesting thing about Mr Perry is that he started in the fashion apparel industry in an unusual manner. As a novel solution to keeping his grip moisture free on the tennis racquet, Fred used to wrap his wrist up with gauze in order to wick away the perspiration. In the late 1940's, FP was approached by a former Austrian footballer by the name of Tibby Wegner with an idea for marketing a sweatband to wear around the wrist with Fred's name on it. Perry said that the initial batch of wrist bands were created out of bath towels, and that they got very heavy when they got wet. After some design improvements on the sweatbands, these newly designed sweatbands launched the Fred Perry Sportswear Company.

Using his smarts and some good marketing, Perry convinced the top tennis players of his day to wear his sweatbands. The rest is history. Soon, Fred branched out into making the now famous polo shirts with the laurel leaf logo that we all know so well. He gave those polo shirts to all the top tennis players at that time such as Hoad and Rosewell as well as giving them out to the BBC Wimbledon crews. Everybody from the tennis players to the tennis fans fell in love with the polo shirts. These were much different than the usual baggy ill fitting shirts that fans were accustomed to seeing on the tennis players. Perry's shirts used an unique honeycomb stitch which allowed the fabric to breath better, even if it was tighter than the usual fare of tennis shirts at that time. In addition, they also looked much better.

Classic Fred Perry Polo

What we now call the Fred Perry Classic Polo shirt was introduced at the 1952 Wimbledon tournament. It has that famous laurel wreath on the front and a double striped collar. It remains a classic design to this day. It's not only just right as sports wear for playing tennis, but the FP polo shirts have been and are today the shirt of preference for several different subcultures all over the world,including designers, musicians and motion picture people.

The signature fit of Fred Perry polo shirts are a staple item in the closets of not just world class tennis stars today such as Andy Murray, but in the closets of everyday normal folks that appreciate not only what is a classic timeless design, but what is one of the coolest looking lines of polo shirts anywhere. Fashions come and go every year or so but real style is eternal.