Explaining the design of clothingfrom @fineasjackson

Transcript

Look at this shirt. This fabric, those little ridges all over it, that isn't normal. No, look at the bad. It hangs much longer than the front. Two things that look wrong but make this shirt a technical masterpiece. This is episode 73 of Chasing Best and today, we're looking at the engineering behind the polo shirt. In the nineteen twenties, tennis was one of the biggest sports in the world and Rene Lacoste was one of its best players. He wasn't naturally the most talented better he was obsessive. He'd study his opponent's weaknesses, map their patterns and then grind them down through sheer preparation. He was meticulous about everything including what he wore and what he worse, like every other player at the tier, was a disaster. Stiff, starched collar, long sleeve, button up dress shirts on clay courts in the summer. But the problem wasn't just the cut. It was the fabric of the shirt itself. Standard cotton shirts are a single flat weave. One layer and smooth. The moment you sweat through it, it collapses onto your skin. Sealed against your chest like a wet second layer. Lacoste couldn't stand it. So he started building something else. He landed on a fabric that had never been used in sportswear, cotton pique. The name comes from the French piquel meaning to quilt. Textile makers named it that because the surface looked like the hand stitched quilts of Marseille. Tiny geometric bridges pressed into the cloth and it feels nothing like a simple cotton knit. Pique is knit to create tiny raised ridges across the entire surface almost like a honeycomb. Those ridges hold the fabric off your skin best barely. And in the gaps between them, air moves allowing heat to escape. So where a flat cotton shirt seals against your chest when you sweat, PK keeps a layer of air between you and the fabric. Even when it's soaked through, it doesn't stick to you in the exact same way. But Lacoste had a second problem. Every time he served, arm overhead, whipping around to hit the ball, the back of his shirt yanked out from his waistband. Between points, he was reaching behind him, stuffing the hem back in. For a player who won matches through rhythm and focus, that was a distraction he hated. So he cut the back panel longer. Two to three extra inches of fabric that just hangs there. But when it's tucked into your pants and you extend for a serve, the slack absorbs the motion. The shirt can actually move with your body instead of pulling free. It's called a tennis tail. In 1926, Lacoste walked onto the court at the US National Championships wearing his creation. Short sleeves, a flat collar with just enough ribbing to flip up against the sun, a strange bumpy fabric nobody recognized and a hem that wasn't even. And every other player was still buttoned into a dress shirt.