The Best Rugby Shirts Are Your Fall Layering Hack

We’ve been celebrating the mall brand renaissance all year, and Abercrombie & Fitch’s take on the Rugby only fans that flame. Here, the brand has eschewed some of its current trend-following design cues and wisely gone for a classic silhouette more akin to the outdoors gear it made decades ago. The result is soft, fits well, and is an affordable way to dip your toes into the world of rugby shirts without too much commitment.

Best Rugby Shirt for Brisk Fall Days: L.L.Bean Wicked Soft Cotton-Cashmere Rugby Sweater

L.L.Bean

Wicked Soft Cotton-Cashmere Rugby Sweater

Pros

Ultra-soft cashmere blend
Easily dressed up

Cons

Not nearly as rugged as other picks

Colors: 3 | Sizes: S-3XL | Fabric: 95% cotton, 5% cashmere

Sometimes, you need to take a rugby shirt off the pitch and into your day-to-day life. For these instances, L.L. Bean’s Wicked Soft Cotton-Cashmere Rugby Sweater has your back. Equal parts sweater polo and rugby shirt, it pairs ultra-soft cashmere with rugged looks that will kill on date night or at the Sunday flea. And somehow, it still holds up to the elements: This cashmere is machine-washable, so you don’t need to baby it if you do end up taking part in your local scrum.

Best Rugby Shirt for Fashion Guys: Wales Bonner Organic Cotton-Jersey Polo Shirt

Wales Bonner

Striped Organic Cotton-Jersey Polo Shirt

Pros

Subtle design choices set it apart
Boxy fit that is easy to style

Cons

Will set you back six Benjamins

Colors: 1 | Sizes: S-XXL | Fabric: 100% cotton

If anyone can turn prep on its head, it’s Grace Wales Bonner. Her embroidered logo, shoulder-paneled rugby shirt brings a touch of class that only designers like her can summon from such a simple silhouette (just look at her upgraded take on the Adidas Samba.) The cotton is also 100% organic, and those thin red stripes are incredibly satisfying given that most rugby shirts come in blockier stripes, if not a single block color.

Best Rugby Shirt for Preppy Goths: J.Crew Striped Placket Rugby Shirt

J.Crew

Striped Placket Rugby Shirt

Pros

Striped placket adds subtle, unexpected detail
Can be paired with a wide range of outfit styles

Cons

Some might prefer a simpler placket

Colors: 3 | Sizes: XS-XXL | Fabric: 100% cotton

Available in just white, black, or a foresty green, this banger from another mall brand, J.Crew, pairs solid, quiet colors with subtly striped plackets and a pleasing, tiny stitched badge on the wrist. The soft, well-fitting cut can easily be dressed up or down, a phrase you’ve heard a lot, but is actually important this time: One of the best things about the modern J.Crew is that you really can wear it whenever, wherever, and however you want. We more than suspect that ethos comes from Creative Director (and Noah founder) Brendon Babenzien and his eclectic, prep-infused street style.

Best Rugby Shirt for the Scrum: Barbarian Traditional Collegiate Stripe Rugby Jersey

Barbarian

Traditional Collegiate Stripe Rugby Jersey

Pros

Heritage style crafted by experts in the field
Offers classic on-field rugby looks
Suitable for actually playing the sport

Cons

Tight wrist cuffs make picking the right size a must

Colors: 4 | Sizes: XS-3XL | Fabric: 100% cotton

If you’re looking for an authentic rugby shirt still worn by players the world over, Barbarian is the way to go. The company’s knockabout gear has been tested on pitches worldwide for four decades and counting, and these rugby shirts are made in Canada out of premium 12 oz. cotton and feature all the details you’d expect from a shirt designed to follow you into battle—which means it’ll hold up just fine accompanying you to the farmer’s market too. Plus, for the real heads, you just can’t beat that little logo patch on the cuff.

More Rugby Shirts We Love

RRL Oversize Striped Jersey Rugby Shirt

RRL

Oversize Striped Jersey Rugby Shirt

You can’t really talk about vintage icons reproduced to perfection without a nod to RRL. Few of the shirts on this list—or any shirts really—stand out from their white-background studio photos alone, but you can just see how damn good this rugby shirt is just by looking at the product shots. The navy is perfectly weathered, the collar is crispy and well-shaped, and the stitching detail is absolutely on point.

Societá Rugby Shirt

Palmes

Societá Rugby Shirt

One of our favorite brands bringing tennis style back to the masses, Copenhagen-based Palmes pairs classic menswear and iconic art motifs with the knowing, lighthearted spirit you need to infiltrate a country club sport. This rugby shirt comes in two iconic colorways: navy blue and a yellow/black stripe, both of which could have easily been worn to a Rugby World Cup match a few decades ago.

Drake’s Wide Stripe Mock Collar Long-Sleeve Jersey

Drake’s

Wide Stripe Mock Collar Long-Sleeve Jersey

This shirt from Drake’s somehow deviates from the rugby shirt formula while simultaneously feeling like the exact thing you would actually see preppy elites playing rugby in throughout the 70s and 80s. The striped crewneck has a collar sewn in, a nice rework that adds both warmth and style cred.

Ayr Go Team Rugby Shirt

Ayr

Go Team Rugby Shirt

Rugged-yet-refined is a target many brands aim for but few hit. Somehow, Ayr stuck the landing with the Go Team Rugby Shirt, contrasting navy with crispy white to make a shirt that looks just as good under a blazer as it does on the local uni’s scrum half. The cotton jersey is hardy but not heavy, meaning it’s easy to wear as a first, second, or third layer — the choice is yours through all four seasons.

Noah Classic Rugby Shirt

Noah

Classic Rugby Shirt

Noah’s riff on an erstwhile classic is a prime example of what the prep-meets-streetwear NY label does best. Its construction is mostly traditional, but catches the eye through its splashy, nautically-vibed color combo and the sartorial wink that is the stitched Noah wrist logo.

Todd Snyder x Champion Oversized Terry Rugby Shirt

Todd Snyder

Champion Oversized Terry Rugby Shirt

Rugby may not be an American sport, but Todd Snyder and Champion make up a definitively American duo that know how to dial in god-tier stylish sportswear for the modern age. Their simple rugby shirt perfectly shows the way their collaboration works: Champion handles comfort and flexibility like only they can, while Snyder brings the prep details to make it pair with slacks and loafers, and his eye for quality to ensure the fabric (in this case 20 oz. French terry) lasts for decades.

Battenwear Rugby Shirt

Battenwear

Pocket Rugby Shirt

Battenwear follows the Yvon Chouinard school of thought: the rugby shirt is great for a scrum, but is just as good on the side of the mountain, at the river, or at the local brewery. Their oversized rugby is made from soft, 100% cotton and features a handy chest pocket to keep your Field Notes pad at the ready.

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.

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.

Across the majority of our buying guides, our team boasts firsthand experience with the bulk of our selects, but a handful are totally new to us. So after several months of intense debate, we tally the votes, collate the anecdotal evidence, and emerge with a list of what we believe to be the absolute best of the category right now, from the tried-and-true stalwarts to the modern disruptors, the affordable beaters to the wildly expensive (but wildly worth-it) designer riffs.

Whatever your preferences, whatever your style, there’s bound to be a superlative version on this list for you. (Read more about GQ’s testing process here.)

How to Style a Rugby Shirt

Rugby shirts are Swiss-army-knife versatile: you can wear one on its own with jeans or chinos, or sub it into just about any situation you’d typically wear a V-neck sweater with (over a tee or under a blazer) to give your look a little extra laid-back ruggedness. In the right setting, the rugby shirt gives off some serious back-roads, rope-towing, van-driving dirtbag energy, too: It wasn’t that long ago that pioneering outdoor apparel designers like Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard were rocking cotton rugby shirts as they climbed El Capitan.

Read the full article here