Style and Substance

Golf Fashion Enters The Tech Era
Remember in 'The Godfather," at the peace
pow-wow of the Five Families when Marlon Brando
addressed the other Dons with his opening line,
"How did things ever get so fad' Well, obviously
he wasn't talking about golf fashion, but the sentiment does run parallel. For over three decades now,
golfers have been fighting a nagging perception and
pop cultural stigma attached to the plaid pants and
white belt phenomenon of the 1970s. Long forgotten is the sophisticated elegance of the Bobby Jones
era of the '20s and '30s, when the Walter'Hagens,
Gene Sarazens and other players in their cashmere
sweater vests, neckties, plus fours, and wingtip golf
shoes were the fashion embodiment of the game's
inherent legacy of class and gentility.
So what happened, particularly in the public's mind,
and how did things get so out of whack? Even into
the '40s and early '50s, the high-styled Katherine
Hepburns and Babe Zaharias's in their long skirts
by Barry Salberg
and braided tweeds, melded naturally with the dress
slacks, polo shirts, and alpaca cardigans of the Ben
Hogan and Arnold Palmer eras. Yet somehow, all
that heritage of civility and glamour became just
another casualty of the overall cultural revolution of
the '70s - and golfers have been taking the fashion
hits for it ever since.
In the 1980s, it was wide stripes, wild pastels,
and geometric color blocks that dominated golf's
sartorial landscape with bold statements that were
virtually light years way from the aforementioned
stylish elegance of years gone by. It was not until
the mid '90s - when Ashworth broke the barrier
with its muted earth colors and subtle printed
knit polos - that things finally settled down and
gradually evolved into the modern Dockers era
of today. . No doubt both Tiger mania and casual
Fridays also helped re-establish golf's fashion
credibility among the general populace.
Previous page: Golf clothing has endured a wild ride, from the classic early era of the '20s, '30s and '40s,
to patterns that tested the threshold of fashion tolerance in the '70s, through the late '80s as Jack Nicklaus
helped bring on the age of modern golf fashion, to today's ultra-modern style of the likes of Tiger Woods,
Sergio Garcia, and a host of others. (top left) Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan at the '42 Masters;
(bottom left) Eddie Pearce at the '76 Masters; (bottom right) Jack Nicklaus at the '87 Masters.
Above: Trevor Immelman sports the new Nike Sphere Macro React Polo, due out in January '07.
l
j
But hold onto your Panama there, partner - we could be in for
another case of deja vu all over again. "I think we're headed
right back to the bright colors and wild golf fashion," says Ken
Morton Jr., president of the Association of Golf Merchandisers
and director of retail at Sacramento's Haggin Oaks Super Shop,
perennially ranked as one of the top operations in the country.
"And from a retailer's standpoint that's a good thing, because
when you see the same tan Dockers on every guy, we're getting
dangerously close to something that you can pick up at any
Sears or Penny's."
Nike Global Apparel
Director Doug Reed.
"And we've got an
incredible amount of
dedicated resources
to develop that proprietary technology."
Although market
share data varies,
Nike and adidas
But beyond just a bolder color story or a more athletic silhouette, there's another keenly significant evolution taking place.
Just two years ago, cotton shirts made up 95-100 percent of
the marketplace. Now however, nearly all of the major brands
are working with new
technical fabrics.
(both relatively new
in golf apparel) are
clearly ranked as the
industry leaders. "Nike
as an apparel brand has
always been at the forefront of performance, innovation, and
technical fabrics that help you do your thing," contends Reed.
"And we were just out there first with more solutions."
"Whether it's 100 percent
or a blend of poly-cotton,
there are a million variations of design and how it
works, but essentially it's
moisture management,
where it wicks away
moisture from the body
and evaporates it quicker,"
explains Morton. "For us,
it's now 60-70 percent of
the business in a men's
polo."
And while tech fabrications
and hot new colors have clearly taken over much of the
business, the high-end traditional, shiny mercerized fine-gage
cottons, with the ultra smooth luxury hand, still have their
well-established upscale beachheads. Let's face it, golf has long
been associated with the upscale, and market leaders in this
area - Ben Hogan, Peter Millar, and Fairway & Greene maintain their niche as the modern links to classic styled luxury
and high-end fashion goods. Distributed exclusively in private
clubs, marquis specialty operations and similar green grass
facilities, Fairway & Greene holds true to its strategy of using
only the finest pima cottons and other fabrications long
abandoned by other manufacturers due to rarity and cost.
Fairway & Greene offers a comprehensive array of both men's
and women's lines, as well as outerwear, all with an emphasis on
high style, luxuriant color palettes, and the finest fabrications,
including tailored silk/wool and linen blends.
But with the modern populist movement and the incursion of
a new breed of infinitely more athletic golfer, it was destined
that fashion also followed suit. "The game has heated up with
technology in every other facet, so it was inevitable that golfers
would also discover the benefits of performance apparel, says
46
I Florida Golf Journal
He also acknowledges the role of Nike-sponsored athletes
Tiger Woods, Michelle Wie and Grace Park as vanguard influencers of consumer demand and credibility. "Tiger is the pinnacle of innovative luxury," says Reed, who relates that Nike
actively seeks insight and input from its athletes. "Anybody
can go out and buy a tech yarn, and there are a lot of vendors
- we try to look inside the game, to embed performance cues
into the garment from the inside out." He talks about not
only moisture management and other considerations such as
UV protection and odor control, but also production elements
of stretch and body mapping: the ability to engineer stripes or
jacquards into the styling of a
technical product.
"Just as you won't ever see
a runner wearing a plain
cotton T-shirt again, golf is
going in the same direction
- it's about performance
and game improvement,"
echoes Tiss Dahan, global
apparel director for adidas
golf, the apparel and
footwear division of
equipment manufacturer
TaylorMade. "We've got 85
years of history of building performance products for athletes,
so our approach to golf is very clear," she says. "You're never
going to see a traditional 'missy' look from us because that's
not who we are - our brand is about building products to
make the golfer perform better, where they don't have to
think about comfort, or how the style looks, but just focus
on the game." Led by Sergio Garcia, and the highly visible
LPGA poster girls Natalie Gulbis and Paula Creamer, that
vision of who they are is clearly evident. "It's the fusion of
function and fashion that makes it work for us," proclaims
Third generation managed and familyowned, Lord Daniel Sportswear recently consolidated its eight different men's and
women's golf labels into two distinct
brands, Fairway Golf & Resort, and
Cotton Traders. Well known for its classic and traditional styling targeted at
the mature golfer, Lord Daniel also
acquired the American licensing and
marketing rights to noted women's
line Astra from the Samsung
Corporation in 2004. The addition of
the Astra label makes Lord Daniel one
styling and fit, but also for its support
of junior golf, the Executive Women's
Golf Association and the National
Golf Foundation, the Hialeahbased company maintains an
ongoing effort to actively
promote the game. With
innovative merchandising
1 techniques, including its
(~
J. ,/ &toms
famed
program,
in-stock
Bette
botCourt
has been
characterized as timely
without losing classic appeal.
www.bette-court.com.
of the few companies offering golf
apparel for every segment of the market. Based out of Sunrise, Florida, the
52-year-old company is headed by the
grandsons of its founder, Marcus
Stern. www.palmland.com;
www.astra.com.
Nationally recognized as one of
top three women's tennis and
golf apparel manufacturers, Tail
was founded and created by CoPresident Cheryl Singer from
a single, signature denim tennis skirt. The golf division
began three years later in 1977. Tail is now
carried in some 2800 specialty operations,
with 180 employees in its corporate offices
One of the premier names in
women's golf apparel, Bette &
Court, was founded in 1991 by
CEO Maria Erickson. Known
not only for top caliber
~
and factories out of Miami. www.tailinc.com.
Photos courtesy of Astra/Lord Daniel~Sportswear.
Dahan.
"It's not tied to an age group,
wants performance
in her golf apparel
fun, and a little bit sexy."
In addition
but for the woman
-
something
to the adidas range of ClimaCool
products,
who
clean,
Dahan
also points to the new category of base-layer compression
referring to the first layer of fabric next to the skin. "It's about
eliminating the bulk of so many layers of clothes in the winter,
and providing your muscles with both warmth and additional
support," says Dahan.
"So you stay fresh, with the same level
of endurance on hole 16 that you had on hole number one."
'There's
a whole lot going on in outerwear
too," says Morton,
who cites Sun Mountain, Foot joy, and Zero Restriction as some
of the other key players in this area. "There are so many more
performance features now versus the old days of just how waterproof you could make a traditional jacket." He notes for example that Zero Restriction has telescoping sleeves, pleats in the
shoulders, and arms and cuffs that are cut golf-specific, along
with new lighter materials, that circumvent the higher price
aspects of Gore-Tex.
"There are so many new waterproof materials that are very good and less expensive," he says. "Outerwear
is really moving in a technical
direction,"
adds Dahan.
just your micro fiber windshirt
anymore,"
as she points to the adi-
48
I Florida Golf Journal
"It's not
das ClimaCool soft-shell outerwear garment that recently won
the IPSO trade show Product-of-the-Year
award in Europe.
And it's not just the big companies
either, as entrepreneurs
from other
fray as well. Founded in
who are on the tech track
sports are entering the
2001 by a former ironman
athlete, Dunning Golf
is positioned
at the highend, with distribution
only in upper-tier green
grass operations.
It incorporates a combination
of traditional
styling with
modern
contrast
brights and
stitching, and is
represented
on tour most
notably by Zach Johnson.
Founder Ralph Dunning
translated
an accomplished
athletic background
to the apparel
industry,
working
closely with Canadian mills to develop proprietary
fabric,
and adapting performance
enhancing
product into every garment in the line. Dunning stresses a complete apparel system
that extends
through
from the compression
to golf specific
technology
into a shoe, but to make the corresponding
new look of that technology
acceptable
and palatable
layer all the way
outerwear.
Similarly, San Francisco's Iconic Sport women's
debuted at the 2006 PCA Merchandise
Show.
to
the consumer.
His flagship product, the adidas Tour 360,
has been eminently
successful in doing just that. An
line
Former
aggressive design, it features a wrap-around-the-foot
composition
for stability, three layers of varied foam
densities for inner comfort, and a research-based
outsole
NASA engineer and accomplished
multi-sport
athlete
Leslie Chow employed both her former backgrounds
in
creating the line from what she refers to as "a blank slate,
focused solely on women's performance
golf wear for our
technology
with strategically
placed lugs and specially
designed cleats for anti clogging.
Clearly, it's not your
father's golf shoe, nor does it perform anything like it.
"It was revolutionary
a year-and-a-half
ago, and we
forced the paradigm to shift," proclaims Ortley.
target customers - sophisticated
and stylish women
golfers 35-55 - to deliver fashionable,
comfortable,
performance
golf wear that this customer wants to
wear on and off the course."
His next project, due out this spring, is an attempt to do
it again, with the new Powerband style - an even more
But perhaps the greatest advances have occurred in
footwear, where Foot joy, with its traditional
look, is still
number one, but adidas, Nike, and others have also made
aggressive and athletic model designed to appeal to the
modern golfer, who in Ortley's words, "is really is turned
significant new contributions.
"We view footwear as
equipment
for your body," says Dave Ortley, global
marketing director for adidas' footwear division, who
contends that they've affected an aesthetic revolution.
"The traditionaJ saddle shoe is not the modern uniform,"
on by power." It contains an inner texture that locks the
foot in place inside the shoe, creating a single, solid unit
that won't slip. "Every time your foot moves inside the
says Ortley,
critica1.
who's key challenge
golf shoe, you lose power," explains Ortley. "Your shoes
are the only direct link to the course, and that bond is
was to not only build
So we harness
all the power in the shoe, allowing
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you to swing hard and stay balanced
and firmly in contact with the
ground throughout the swing." And
with a solid worldwide tour presence, adidas boasts not only brand
and aesthetic acceptability among
tour pros, but also invaluable visibility and exposure to the consumer,
with its distinctive three-stripe signature easily spotted on any television screen.
Also joining in the footwear
rebellion is the high-ticket ECCO
brand. A 43-year-old Danish company, it's represented on the professional tours by a number of major
names, including Fred Couples and
Colin Montgomerie. And unlike
other brands, ECCO doesn't offer
a range of product price points everything it makes is top end.
"ECCO is the leader in comfort
technology, both in golf and within
every other footwear arena," says
C.E. Tuite, general sales manager
of ECCO's U.S. Golf division.
Vertically integrated, ECCO owns
its entire manufacturing chain, from
the tanneries that produce the
leather to the factories that make
-•
I,.
I
I"
the shoes. "We are not a brand trying to
crossover into the footwear category," says
Tuite. "We dare to be different, and have
successfully blended fashion, comfort and
function into the most technologically
advanced golf shoe." There is no particular
signature model in the ECCO line, which
contains a range of nearly 100 distinctive,
cutting edge styles, including an updated
highly stylized adaptation of the classic
saddle. Comfort is key here, and ECCO is
uncompromising in its positioning as
the luxury market leader.
So whether is it's footwear or clothing, modern golfers now have an assortment of hightech options, and are set to tee it up for a
dramatic new era on the fashion front .• :.
Barry
Salberg, based in Northern
holds an MBA from the University
California,
of Southern
and is a former marketing executive
in the apparel industry.
50 I Florida Golf Journal
California,