Polo university club suits

[pe-ja-per]

How do you rate Polo university club suits? Worth picking up for 50$? How old are they?
Thanks for the input.

 

[Dewey]

Entry-level suits for men with undergraduate bodies (slim at the waist). Not bad quality in my experience; much better than the entry-level suits of the last ten years. They tend to run long in the body, with a lower button stance and narrow lapel, but not aggressively so. Fabrics were not fragile since they were made (1980s?) before everything had to be Super 1xxs to con stingy men with no taste into excitement. If the suit fits you well and is clean and all that, $50 is worth it, sure.

 

[Faded501s]

^^^ That's my experience also. One of the first "nice" suits I bought was a PUC. Very nice material and excellent construction for a fused job. This is one of the suits I had dry-cleaned every week for years (before I knew better) with no ill effect. The cut, lapels, everything, were very moderate and a timeless design.

 

[ld111134]

Back in the Paleolithic Period (i.e. the '80s and early '90s), Polo University Club was Ralph Lauren't entry level "diffusion" line while blue label Polo was the mainstream line - Purple Label was relatively scarce and could only be obtained at the Polo stores (e.g. on Madison Avenue in Manhattan and Michigan Avenue in Chicago) or a few select retailers.

 

[PoloPlayer]

Originally Posted by pe-ja-per

How do you rate Polo university club suits? Worth picking up for 50$? How old are they?
Thanks for the input.
What others have posted here is correct. Perhaps I can add a few details since I was employed as a sales person in the New York showrom of Polo University (Club) for nine years.
Polo U. was a licensee of POLO/Ralph Lauren; not an in-house product. The manufacturer was the Greif Cos. of Allentown, PA. They also held the Chaps license. The RL organization supervised the styling of the line, but Greif sales staff sold it. That was my job. I also covered all of the POLO shops around the country.
Polo U. was conceived as a young graduate's first suit, in an affordable price range. It was also conceived as a broad-based source of revenue for the RL and Greif companies.

Greif made a very nice engineered garment in one of the nicest factories in the U.S. We worked very hard with the manufacturing staff to get the POLO expression captured in an inexpensive suit. We looked for a very soft shoulder, low button stance and flattering body shape with suppressed waist. Obviously, we could not offer the same wonderful fabrics that the POLO blue label line offered; and Ralph did not want us to look too much like his designer product either. They often vetoed models and fabrics as looking too competitive with the "real" POLO.
In the mid 80's the Club was dropped from the brand name by mutual agreement.. In the early 90's, the Greif Cos. ran into the onslaught of the Italian influence that consumed menswear and ended the natural shoulder American influence in style. The stores that sold it disappeared and Greif went out of business. I left the menswear industry about three years later.

If you find a Polo University Club garment, it was made between 1981 and about 1985, when the Club designation was dropped. I had a great wardrobe of that clothing; all custom cut for me. They are all gone now.

I believe a Canadian manufacturer does or did make the Polo U. line after Greif closed. That market was basically moved into the "Lauren" by Ralph Lauren concept later.

 

[joronamo]

i know its an old thread but can someone who is an expert on RL POLO tell me the different lines they made in the 90s. I am after some full-cut trousers fairly baggy/loose compared to todays slimmer standards. something similar to this https://www.google.com.au/search?q=...2F71-men_full_cut_pants-7298.tailored;308;500 thanks

 

[Allawaywe]

It was a brand under the Polo/Ralph Lauren umbrella made for them by a different company in the 80's and 90's. No bad quality - Department store level.