The struggle to stay warm as energy bills soar across Europe has finally hit the men’s catwalks in Paris. The French solution? Let them wear polo necks.
At Givenchy they were tall and black, while at Wales Bonner, they came in narrow salmon pink. Elsewhere, there were classic black flip-flops at Hed Mayner lined with faux fur benches and candy pink versions at Walter Van Beirendonck.
On the opening night of Paris Fashion Week, Saint Laurent showed funnel-neck jumpers, some of which turned into dresses. Covering their owner’s mouths, they seemed to swallow the models whole.
The polo neck has a long tradition within European style. “They’re a classic,” admitted Matthew Williams, creative director of French brand Givenchy, backstage, who opened his show with five of them. “We do this every season.” Williams is best known for his punk style in tailoring, but this season he’s styled his polo necks under sharp black suits and broad-shouldered coats. Some grazed the chin, while others were so wide you could fit a jumper underneath.
During the 1960s, polo necks made their way into the wardrobes of intellectuals like Samuel Beckett and Michel Foucault, and Italian film stars like Marcello Mastroianni, who regularly paired it with a wide-brimmed trench hat. Overnight, they would become the unofficial uniform of Left Bank and red-carpet thinkers on the Riviera.
However, recently the polo neck has become a hot topic in France. It started last fall when French finance minister Bruno Le Maire asked civil servants to ditch their shirts and ties for a polo neck instead of turning on the heating — and culminated when Emmanuel Macron arrived at a meeting wearing a cashmere black. prompting opposition leader Marine Le Pen to tweet: “Don’t have enough heating? Let them wear cashmere.”
A favorite among the 1% too – both fictional (Succession’s Shiv Roy wears £700 Gabriela Hearst versions) and actual (LVMH’s billionaire owners, the Arnault family, are rarely seen in anything else) – they’re also the de facto uniform of technology. CEOs who are among the richest people in the world.
Few in France will want to look like Macron this week. Tomorrow, Paris will come to a standstill when thousands of workers strike across the capital’s public transport network in opposition to his government’s planned reform to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
One solution then is fashion wool. A thick cream version from North Face was seen three times in two days – not on the catwalk, but the people who make it happen: drivers, journalists and photographers. Outside the Givenchy show, one driver, Khaldo, said it was so warm you could run away wearing “just a T-shirt underneath.” He agreed, there was no need for a polo neck underneath.
