Dressed to a tee: Fashion at the Open

Published on Monday 12 July 2010 20:01

Golf fashion used to be all beige trousers and ill-fitting shirts. But ahead of this week's Open, Alice Wyllie finds that looking good is now very much par for the course

• Ian Poulter, above, has launched a range of golf clothes in tartan, and it seems the pattern has caught on

WITH the Open Championship kicking off on Thursday, we'll be seeing a few birdies and eagles in St Andrews in the coming days. However, there might be one or two peacocks taking to the green as well. When it comes to style, golf was once associated with bad chinos and baggy polyester, but with more and more stylish golf attire becoming available in the past decade, fashion and golf are no longer mutually exclusive.

English player Ian Poulter is one of the sport's most flamboyant dressers and recently launched IJP Design (ijpdesign.com) an eye-catching collection of golf clothing and accessories, featuring specially-patented tartans which appear on everything from caps to bootleg trousers. He syas that "the most important thing on the course is to feel comfortable. If you feel like you look good, you'll play good."

Mike McAllister of golfing style blog chapeaunoirgolf.com - which covers everything from the latest must-haves to kooky trends on the green - agrees.

"It's generally accepted that if you look good, you feel good - which can then translate into playing better golf," he says. "Golf gives people a platform on which to express their personality a bit more freely than they can in most other situations. There are certain pieces one might never wear to the office, like a bright orange trouser, but it's the very item you look forward to wearing all week when it comes time for your Saturday morning fourball. Golf is an opportunity for people to take some chances - with their scores, and their clothing."

From plus fours to Argyle knits, golf clothing over the years has been nothing if not distinctive. Twenty-time PGA Tour winner Doug Sanders who rose to fame in the 1960s would dye his entire ensemble – including shoes and underpants – a single bright colour. He was not alone among golfers in his sartorial eccentricity, and by the 1970s and 1980s golf attire had become something of a joke.

Fast forward to the noughties and golf clothing is no longer the lesson in terrible taste it once was. A number of players, including Poulter, are now famed for their knack for fairway fashion.

"Tour players like Ian Poulter and Rickie Fowler are definitely the trend setters in the golf world, but I like to look at the junior players at my club to see what's coming next," says McAllister. "Younger players aren't afraid to take fashion risks, as they cross-pollinate street and urban styles with slimmer fit trousers and polos. Urban styles will be a big influence in the next year or two, and we already see evidence of this in shoes and caps."

More youthful styles are becoming increasingly popular on the fairway. Swedish golfer Jesper Parnevik has been known to wear a skinny tie and a pork pie hat on the green, favouring designs by J. Lindeberg. He follows in the footsteps of fellow golfing mould breakers like the late American player Payne Stewart, who regularly wore plus fours and a tam-o'-shanter during the 1980s and 90s and made his debut in 1982 wearing pale lavender knickers.

Fed up with the lack of fashionable golf clothing available, golf fan Andy Coulter from Linlithgow founded Golfposer.com in 2005. The website offers the kind of stylish golf clothing for men and women that can be worn both on and off the course, by high-fashion brands including J Lindeberg, Emporio Armani and Hugo Boss, which sponsors numerous players and tournaments.

"There was a time when golf had a pretty bad image when it came to fashion," explains Coulter. "It was all baggy beige trousers and ill-fitting shirts. A lot of younger guys, in particular, were finding it difficult to find anything they wanted to wear on the course, let alone in the pub after a game. However, in the past few years a number of very respected fashion brands have branched out into golf clothing and its image has really changed."

Indeed, when it comes to fashionable attire, greens seem to be the new black. Celebrities including Samuel L Jackson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Claudia Schiffer and Justin Timberlake have flaunted their fashion credentials on the links, and at London Fashion Week in February, Paul Smith showed plus fours on the catwalk for his Autumn/Winter 2010 collection. He follows in the footsteps of other high-profile designers like Louis Vuitton, Bally and Dolce & Gabbana, who showed Argyle knits two years ago.

In 1998, Prada became the first high-end label to launch a golf line, but the trend has really taken off in the past couple of years, during which Dior and Chanel - arguably the two most powerful fashion houses in the world - have both launched collections of golf wear. Chanel created a golf bag, complete with clubs and balls featuring the company's famous logo, while Dior came up with a pink-and-yellow Argyle-patterned golf bag and matching knickers.

"When major mainstream brands began taking a serious interest in golf, creating golf-specific ranges, things really started to take off," says McAllister. "The major world golf tours have had a large impact as well, as more and more players became affiliated with specific brands and began wearing clothing based on a 'script' that aligned with the brand's current marketing efforts. A weekend golfer has always wanted to emulate their favourite player, and looking like a pro became that much easier."

So whether you're one for traditional plus fours and Argyle knits or street-style fedoras and skinny polo shirts, it appears that fashion on the fairway has become par for the course.