Collar

Traditional shirt collar-not buttoned down (also known as the Forward Point Collar).

An upturned collar (or popped collar) is an otherwise flat, protruding collar of either a shirt, jacket, or coat that has been turned upward.

With the advent of the tennis shirt, however, the upturned collar took on a whole new purpose. In 1929 René Lacoste, the French 7-time Grand Slam champion, decided that the stiff dress shirts and ties usually worn by tennis players were too cumbersome and uncomfortable for the tennis court. Instead, he designed a loosely-knit pique cotton shirt with an unstarched, flat protruding collar and a longer shirt-tail in back than in front. This came to be known as the tennis shirt.

Lacoste’s design called for a thick piqué collar that one would wear turned up in order to block the sun from one’s neck skin. Thus, the tennis shirt’s upturned collar was originally designed by the inventor of the tennis shirt, himself, for ease and comfort on the tennis court, aiding the player by helping to prevent sunburn.

Gradually, as tennis shirts became more popular and were produced more widely, their use transcended tennis and was adopted for golf, polo, other sports, and everyday life. As the tennis shirt entered the popular culture, wearers were less apt to turn up their collar to block the sun if not wearing the shirt during sport or outdoor activity. Thus, most people began to wear a tennis shirt without the collar turned up, or turning them up only when involved in sport. The professional golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is known for this practice today; as the golf shirt is a looser-fitting descendant of René Lacoste’s tennis shirt, off the course Zoeller wears his golf shirt’s collar turned down, whereas one often observes him with an upturned collar while he is playing.