A Henley shirt is a collarless pullover shirt, characterized by a round neckline and a

placket A placket (also spelled placquet) is an opening in the upper part of trousers or skirts, or at the neck or sleeve of a garment. Plackets are almost always used to allow clothing to be put on or removed easily but are sometimes used purely as a d ...

about long and usually having 2–5 buttons. It essentially is a collarless

polo shirt A polo shirt, tennis shirt, golf shirt, or chukker shirt is a form of shirt with a collar. Polo shirts are usually short sleeved but can be long; they were used by Polo#Players, polo players originally in India in 1859 and in Great Britain durin ...

. The sleeves may be either short or long, and it can be made in almost any fabric, although

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

, cotton- polyester blends, and

thermals A thermal column (or thermal) is a rising mass of buoyant air, a convective current in the atmosphere, that transfers heat energy vertically. Thermals are created by the uneven heating of Earth's surface from solar radiation, and are an example ...

are by far the most popular. Henley shirts are generally regarded as

menswear Fashion is a form of self-expression and autonomy at a particular period and place and in a specific context, of clothing, footwear, lifestyle, accessories, makeup, hairstyle, and body posture. The term implies a look defined by the fashion ...

, but women's versions have appeared as

business casual Business casual is an ambiguously defined Western dress code that is generally considered casual wear but with smart (in the sense of "well dressed") components of a proper lounge suit from traditional informal wear, adopted for white-colla ...

and casual wear as well.

History

Henley shirts were named because they were the traditional uniform of

rower Rowing, sometimes called crew in the United States, is the sport of racing boats using oars. It differs from paddling sports in that rowing oars are attached to the boat using oarlocks, while paddles are not connected to the boat. Rowing is ...

s in the English town of Henley-on-Thames. The first Henley Royal Regatta was in 1839. In his biography of Ralph Lauren, the journalist Michael Gross quotes a New York merchant who recalled showing a vintage shirt to a Ralph Lauren buyer: "I showed this fellow underwear—a three-button long-sleeve shirt by Johnstown Knitting Mills. He said, 'This is a new shirt.' That's where he got the idea for the Henley shirt."

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Henley Shirt Shirts Tops (clothing)