FROM TOP: Polo player Henry Smith wears Hurlingham Polo 1875 stretch cotton pique sash polo shirt and polo whites; Ralph Lauren Pre-Fall’18; Gucci’s bestselling snaffle shoe
in to watch the Argentine Open, just one high-profile international event, compared with the 8.7 million viewers who watched the FA Cup Final on BBC1. The sport currently has 23,947 players worldwide across 90 countries and has a growing fanbase, particularly with women and students. During freshers’ week in 2017, 300 students signed up for university clubs. Some, like Regent’s University in London, even offer a polo scholarship. The idea of fusing polo – the sport and its runners and riders – and jet-setting groupies into a brand was not lost on American designer, Ralph Lauren, who built an empire and amassed a fortune from it. But now polo is coming home. No records exist on who invented the sport, however it is believed to have been first played in central Asia by tribesmen who used human skulls as a ball – the British tea planters in India, who were introduced to the game, are responsible for giving it a makeover and its iconic kit – notably the polo shirt, which has spawned a thousand copies. Although polo was subsequently exported to Argentina, Australia and the United States its spiritual home remains in the UK, where the official body, The Hurlingham Polo Association (HPA), resides. It was at its headquarters in Hounslow Heath (now Heathrow airport) that the rules for the game were first laid down in 1875. The decision to launch a brand born out of, and named after, Hurlingham, which still
oversees 38 of the 77 polo-playing countries from Azerbaijan to Gambia, is pertinent. The game is not the genteel Pimm’s and divotstomping as we know it. Serious injuries can occur to both horse and human as they hurtle at each other at speeds of 30mph on fields the length of six football pitches. It is still the fastest team ball game on the planet and the rules, which limit a match to six ‘chukkas’ of seven minutes, are there to stop the ponies from getting exhausted. Hurlingham Polo 1875, as the new polo fusion brand is called, may well be British born and bred but it has its sights set way beyond the horsey set. It hopes to muscle in on the activewear clothing market, forecasted to exceed $231.7bn by 2024, and in addition to polo whites, do for their newly launched equestrianised jod-jeggings and jod-jeans what yoga pants have done for Canadian brand Lululemon. This yoga-fusion brand ranks in the top ten global clothing retailers and has simultaneously catapulted sheer or partly-sheer yoga pants into high fashion and every woman’s wardrobe. ‘It’s fairly easy to build a business, but it’s hard to build a brand,’ says Simon Hawkins, CEO and founder of Hurlingham Polo 1875, who previously worked for Reebok and witnessed the first soft trainer designed and marketed for women roll off the production line in the 1980s. ‘But polo was already steeped
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