The Finest Polo

The finest polo shirt, both in style and in make. 

This merino knit was designed to be the most elegant option for a polo in warm weather. The high-performance material retains a smooth, smart look, while the collar is cut like a shirt to create a smarter look. 

Worn with tailored linen trousers and loafers in the Summer - with either a blazer or an overshirt over the top if required - it's hard to think of a more elegant warm-weather outfit. 

For Simon, the most important point in the design was the material: "Cotton is the obvious material for Summer, but it's often too soft and dense to be cool. And silk/cashmere can be warm too. A high-twist merino, on the other hand, lets all the air through and has a nice dry touch."

Wool also has the advantages of drying quicker and holding odour less than cotton - both useful properties in hot weather. Combine that with the way it retains its shape, and it’s fair to say high-twist merino performs better than anything else.

Design-wise, the polo has a higher, more structured collar than most, which is more elegant, frames the face, and sits better under the collar of a jacket. More like a smart shirt than a regular polo. 

It is cut slim, with slightly longer sleeves and longer ribbing than most mainstream polo shirts - to give it a subtle vintage style. In the images Simon is wearing a Medium.

The Finest Polo is made by Umbria Verde in Italy, which makes some of the finest knitwear in the world, and supplies the best designer brands. This can be seen in the flatness of the seams, fineness of the fashioning, and other small details that all contribute to it feeling like the finest polo shirt there is. 

Read more on the Finest Polo, its design journey and details, on the launch article here.

Care:

- If in doubt, hand wash or dry clean. Hand washing is simple - just soak in warm water with a little detergent for half an hour or so.

- If used to washing knitted woollens in your machine, it can also be washed on a delicate/wool cycle, cool/30 degrees, with minimal spin.

- Either way, dry on a rack, do not tumble dry. Also, iron on a wool setting afterwards if you want to remove wrinkles and any perception of shrinkage this can create. 

- Given wool's odour-resistance, the polo may be fine to wear more than one day without washing.