Roll With It
5 minute read
Fashion can be divisive: crocs, velour, chinos, dad trainers and meat dresses – they’ve all inspired debate as vociferous as the conversations around climate change in Glasgow this week. But the most contentious style question? Polo, crew or V-neck. What’s your pullover personality?
Polo necks are to me what colourful socks are to Jon Snow; the item of clothing I’m most identified with. They’re the anchor of my wardrobe and they offer a perspective on my personality as much as Snow’s socks do on his. While the veteran broadcaster’s woolies suggest a whimsical, nonconformist streak, my polo necks (and I own many) infer a natural predilection for introversion and reserve. Forget about eyes, clothes are more often the windows of our souls.
In a recent article for The Guardian, Jess Cartner-Morley proclaimed that “people who wear polo necks run the world”. I laughed, out loud, in my polo neck, as I sat wondering where my next freelance gig would come from. Perhaps polo necks are the new power dressing? If so, great. It’s said you should dress for the job you want, not the job you have, so by this standard I’ll be turning away clients by Christmas.
I understand what she means though. I have always associated polo necks with intellectuals like Joan Didion, changemakers like Gloria Steinem and cool creatives like Erin O’Connor – smart, effective, independent women.
Polo necks do for women what ties do for men: they make a statement of intent.
They’re an ‘I mean business’, ‘don’t mess with me’ item of clothing. In a wonderful New York Times article from 2015, polo necks (or turtlenecks as they say in the States) were described as having “a certain sophistication in the overwhelming rejection of decolletage...” It’s true, isn’t it? Wasn’t it, in part, Victoria Beckham’s transition from plunging necklines to polo necks that elevated her from WAG to style icon and power player?
Polo necks may be the focused and driven older sister of the flirty, less formal V-neck, but they have a sex appeal all of their own. They’re sensuous, secretive, suggestive, hinting and teasing at what lies beneath. They have an intriguing eroticism personified by Marilyn Monroe in her 1953 cover for American LIFE magazine in which she wore a black cashmere polo neck and capri pants and never looked more beautiful or beguiling. Similarly, the most iconic image of Princess Diana is arguably the cover photograph of Andrew Morton’s Book, Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words, in which, like Monroe, the late princess stunned in a simple black roll neck.
What other piece of clothing can make a woman feel smart, sensuous and swaddled all at the same time? Surely the polo neck has greater design ingenuity than either Spanx or Skims?
In recent years, designers have played with the paradoxes of a polo neck, and its dual image of stuffy and sexy.
Gabriela Hearst’s open-back, turtleneck cashmere dress, worn by Shiv Roy in an episode of Sky Atlantic’s Succession, upended beautifully the stereotypical image of a polo neck-clad woman. Dressed in the classic-looking midi knit, the billionaire’s daughter, at first glance, is the epitome of a slick but conservatively dressed woman, until she spins round and her entire back is exposed. The front of her dress says boardroom, the back suggests bedroom. The dress encapsulates perfectly the strength and vulnerability, which is the essence of femininity. It’s this dichotomy that Victoria Beckham has built her brand on, as Phoebe Phoelo did for Céline before her.
Though often perceived as the overlooked middle child of the polo, crew and V-neck family, I’m very fond of a round neck too. Its boyish simplicity appeals to my unfussy aesthetic, but it doesn't have the same shielding effect as a polo neck. I don’t feel armoured up in the same way. Nor does a crew neck offer the variety of styling options a polo neck does, from fine-knit, body-skimming versions ideal for layering by day, and showing off your silhouette at night, to chunky, oversized options that can do double-duty as mini dresses or blanket sweaters.
The joy I get from snuggling into a polo neck can only be compared to watching an episode of noughties drama Friday Night Lights. Both make me feel warm inside. Given how reassuring I find a high-neck sweater, it always surprises me that polo necks have received such a bad rap over the years. For the most part they’ve been seen as the preserve of women who were either dreary, devilish or chaste. From animated favourites like Scooby Doo’s ace accomplice Velma and Sleeping Beauty’s Maleficent to Diane Keaton’s 50-something singleton in Something’s Gotta Give, whose thin-knit roll necks were meant to represent an uptight and neurotic nature.
For all my eulogising, though, I know many women who make suffocating sounds simply at the idea of wearing a polo neck, especially a tight one (the more fitted, the better I say). But most of them are free-spirited, summer-loving, caramel-skinned extroverts. They’re not waiting for leaves and temperatures to fall so that they can style their winter knits with the same exuberance they dress a Christmas tree. Like Meghan and Harry, polo necks rarely invite an even-handed response. Women either love them or hate them.
And if all of these soothing and cocooning benefits delivered by the humble polo neck weren’t enough, nothing else will disguise a dodgy foundation-covered jaw line better than a chin-hugging roll neck. For someone who’s had more bad skin days than haircuts, I’m sold.
Marie Kelly, November 2021
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