In the 1820s, students at the Rugby School, in Central England, began playing a game that involved running around with a ball. In 1845, students there penned the “laws of football as played at Rugby School”; before long the game was referred to as the “Rugby style of play” and, eventually, simply “rugby.” It is often said that rugby is, “a hooligan’s sport played by gentlemen.” The wares of the game’s early participants certainly lent credence to that: white flannel button-down shirts were paired with matching trousers, small caps, bowties and, occasionally, monocles.

The white flannels, however, weren’t a great fit on the pitch. The long shirt tails became a pain—it was easy for defenders to latch on and make a tackle—while the trousers were prone to, well, ripping, as recounted in The History of Scottish Rugby. The flannel shirts were quickly replaced by collared wool jumpers, giving us the first iteration of the rugby shirt as we know it today. Of course, those who have worn wool known that it isn’t the most comfortable of fabrics and it is prone to stretching. The third time was the charm, with teams opting to use heavy cotton to make their collared long-sleeved shirts.

Equally important as the material, though, were the details of the rugby shirt’s collar: The collar was to be short and rigid and there were to be no buttons on the placket. While today these are things that distinguish the rugby shirt from the polo shirt—a distant cousin owing to bourgeois roots—in the late 19th century, they were details designed with player safety in mind. A short, rigid collar wouldn’t flop around and wouldn’t given defenders something to grab hold of from behind when trying to drag players down. The buttons, for their part, were removed so players wouldn’t get scratched when tackling. In later years, some rugbys featured buttons, though they were hidden and often made of soft, somewhat malleable material (generally rubber).

The rugby shirt also evolved from an aesthetic perspective in the latter part of the 19th century and throughout the early 1900s. As with any sport, players from different rugby teams had to be differentiated from one another. At the outset, many rugby shirts featured one solid color, but, as the sport grew, there were more and more clubs and it became increasingly common for clubs to merge. As a result, many rugby clubs introduced two-toned shirts, either because their solid color of choice was taken by another team, or as the result of a merger between two clubs with distinct primary colors. Unlike soccer kits, which featured vertical stripes, rugby shirts began to feature hoops (horizontal stripes) of alternating colors. While most rugby shirts opted for five or six hoops, some clubs—like the legendary Barbarian FC—instead placed a single large stripe across the chest. Before long, this became the norm for clubs and collegiate squads; national teams, however, continued to use monochromatic rugby shirts and, for the most part, continue to do so to this day—consider Australia’s distinctive yellow shirts, South Africa’s emerald green or New Zealand’s all-black look (it’s the latter’s nickname, after all).

It wasn’t until the 1950s that the rugby shirt began to be worn off the pitch, a period which coincided with the rise of other classic athletic-inspired prep pieces like the classic varsity jacket. Like most sports paraphernalia, the rugby shirt was initially adopted by fans—students at posh colleges would turn out to games wearing the same long-sleeved shirts as on the pitch, a show of solidarity with those on the field.

Slowly, but surely, it became a staple of sport and class-obsessed Western society. The rugby shirt had a collar, which lent itself to the fashion of the times, but was more comfortable and casual than a button-down. It was also an indicator of social status: Tony Collins, one of the world’s foremost experts on the sport, explained to The Wall Street Journal that rugby was primarily played “by people who were privately educated” and, as such, “[rugby shirts] were an indicator of who you were and your status in the world.”

In 1950’s America, the rugby appeared to be popular on Ivy League campuses—again, a testament to the social status attached to it—whereas it had become more mainstream in Britain. School-affiliated stores would sell generic versions of the shirts worn by the varsity teams, while J.Press, the American clothier, would import rugby shirts directly from the U.K. It remained a relatively niche part of the prep style lexicon until the mid-’60s. In 1963, This Sporting Life, a movie about rugby, debuted in theaters to much fanfare in the United States and helped popularize the sport, but also the heavy cotton garment. Shōsuke Ishizu’s seminal 1965 book, Take Ivy, contains images of students walking through campuses wearing rugbys; while Take Ivy wasn’t necessarily widely-read in America, it did speak to the garment’s ties to the prep aesthetic in the ’60s.

A pair of notable Britons actually co-opted the rugby as a sign of class rebellion in the ’60s and ’70s. Mick Jagger, a celebrity, but not born to an upper-class family, was famously fond of the garment and helped democratize it. So, too, did David Hockney, the working-class painter, who was frequently photographed wearing a rugby shirt.

As the rugby’s popularity grew, more brands began to produce their own casual takes on the garment and more people began to wear it. Gant, the Connecticut-founded menswear label often credited with democratizing the button-down shirt, launched a new sportswear line in 1974 and called it “Rugger”, a nod to one of rugby’s nicknames. Interestingly, the garment was appropriated by rock climbers, who saw tremendous value in the heavy cotton’s durability. Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard is actually the one widely credited with popularizing the rugby among climbers and the brand he founded before Patagonia, Great Pacific Iron Works, frequently featured rugbys in its advertisements.

By the 1980s the rugby had—somewhat curiously—become a symbol of Americana, rather than Britannia. In addition to Gant, revered New England brands L.L. Bean and Land’s End made the rugby shirt a staple of their offerings and Columbia Knit, a Portland, Oregon-based manufacturer, helped turn the rugby shirt into one of the quintessential made-in-America pieces. Prep-minded retailers, like [Brooks Brothers](https://www.grailed.com/designers/brooks-brothers, stocked rugbys in larger quantities than J.Press had in the ’50s. Ralph Lauren, too, began producing rugbys and by the 1990s, the garment featured prominently in advertisements for Polo Ralph Lauren.

As part of hip-hop’s wider appropriation of traditional American prep in the ’90s, the rugby became a common sighting on emcees—think of Snoop Dogg rocking a Tommy Hilfiger rugby on Saturday Night Live. And, like many things in the ’90s, the rugbys worn casually gradually became bigger and baggier, which stood in stark contrast to the tight-fitting garments worn on the pitch in a bid to give defenders absolutely nothing to swipe at. It also stood in stark contrast to the on-pitch product, when, at the turn of the millennium, teams were eschewing the traditional long-sleeved, heavy cotton collared rugby for form-fitting, collarless, lightweight synthetic tops that more closely resembled soccer jerseys. Needless to say, the contemporary rugby jersey does not have the same panache of the traditional rugby shirt, nor is it held in the same regard.

The traditional rugby—fit and all—made a comeback during the hashtag-menswear era, when Ivy League-inspired prep greatly influenced American style. The aforementioned brands all capitalized by releasing rugbys. Ralph Lauren launched a Rugby diffusion line in 2009 that was focused, not just its namesake garment, but also on the bourgeois private school aesthetic with which the sport was associated with. Michael Bastian, an American designer, very much made the rugby a key tenet of his brand, but also of his aesthetic—which he sold through collaborations with Gap and Gant.

But as the hashtag-menswear trend gave way to the streetwear dominated-era of the last half-decade or so, the rugby was once again relegated to niche status. Some brands, though, like Aimé Leon Dore, Noah and Rowing Blazers, which have championed a street-sensible prep look for years—even when everybody else was content with T-shirts and sneakers and hoodies—have acted as the “cool” L.L. Beans and Land’s Ends of contemporary menswear by making the rugby a staple piece of their collections in the last few years. Rowing Blazers, for one, has looked at historical rugby shirts for inspiration, recreating aesthetically pleasing tops, like the Japanese national team shirt from 1932.

As the streetwear trend has waned slightly in the last year, the rugby has slowly started to creep back into the mainstream, paired with stone-washed denim and chinos and existing in a sweet spot between casual and traditional menswear—as it always has. Now, it isn’t just brands like Noah and Rowing Blazers churning out rugbys; the Guccis, Thom Brownes and Beams-es of the fashion world are all revisiting the prep classic.

Once a sign of British bourgeoisie, the rugby is, today, a symbol of Ivy League Americana and bears little resemblance to the kits worn by athletes. Though there are chapters to the rugby’s existence, it has arguably reached omnipresent status within the menswear lexicon—it will always be there, in some form. If not at the heart of a prep revival like the one we appear set to witness in the coming years, then at the fringes. Really, the one place where it can safely be assumed the traditional rugby shirt won’t be seen in the future is where the garment first began: out on the pitch.