As for the fit, Gap’s polo is trim but not tight for a tailored air that looks great with dress pants or under a suit. While there are other polos that felt a little nicer and fit a little better, Gap’s got the budget category locked down because each polo will only set you back $35. Plus, with Gap’s frequent markdowns, you can easily catch it for even less.
More Polo Shirts We Love
What to Look for in a Great Polo Shirt
In the decades since Monsieur Lacoste birthed the category, the polo shirt has evolved far beyond the croc’s wildest imagination. These days, the market is teeming with your requisite mesh golf polos and pique tennis polos, but it also includes scuzzy polo cardigans, slinky zip-up polos, and airy linen polos well-suited to an Amalfi getaway. Which, exactly, are worth your time?
To answer that question, we assessed the category holistically, with an eye on design, quality, and of course, dashing good looks. If polos used to be the sole preserve of casual Fridays, they’re now a mainstay of everyday life—in offices, fairways, and tragically cool art galleries alike. So we scoured the market for polos that could hang in each of those venues and situations (or all of ‘em, when possible), to ID the shirts that would meet the most people’s needs.
Each winning pick was carefully selected for its excellence in its respective category. We looked to the genre-defining options and the versions that truly broke new ground—but we also assessed the polos that may not have invented a new category, but found a way to do it better than their predecessors.
How We Test and Review Products
Style is subjective, we know—that’s the fun of it. But we’re serious about helping our audience get dressed. Whether it’s the best white sneakers, the flyest affordable suits, or the need-to-know menswear drops of the week, GQ Recommends’ perspective is built on years of hands-on experience, an insider awareness of what’s in and what’s next, and a mission to find the best version of everything out there, at every price point.
Our staffers aren’t able to try on every single piece of clothing you read about on GQ.com (fashion moves fast these days), but we have an intimate knowledge of each brand’s strengths and know the hallmarks of quality clothing—from materials and sourcing, to craftsmanship, to sustainability efforts that aren’t just greenwashing. GQ Recommends heavily emphasizes our own editorial experience with those brands, how they make their clothes, and how those clothes have been reviewed by customers. Bottom line: GQ wouldn’t tell you to wear it if we wouldn’t.
How We Make These Picks
We make every effort to cast as wide of a net as possible, with an eye on identifying the best options across three key categories: quality, fit, and price.
To kick off the process, we enlist the GQ Recommends braintrust to vote on our contenders. Some of the folks involved have worked in retail, slinging clothes to the masses; others have toiled for small-batch menswear labels; all spend way too much time thinking about what hangs in their closets.
We lean on that collective experience to guide our search, culling a mix of household names, indie favorites, and the artisanal imprints on the bleeding-edge of the genre. Then we narrow down the assortment to the picks that scored the highest across quality, fit, and price.
