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Looking for more warm-weather style intel? These are the best polo shirts on the market right now—plus everything else you’ll want to wear this summer.
Every now and then, an invention comes along that threatens to alter the course of history forever. Indoor plumbing; sliced bread; cellphones; those multicolored striped hats with little propellers at the top. Genius, Calvin once told Hobbes, is never understood in its own time, but wider understanding is hardly a prerequisite for human ingenuity, and we tend to be better off for it.
And yet, when we first heard about this particular stroke of genius, we’re ashamed to say we didn’t quite understand it. “It’s a…knit polo, right?” members of the GQ staff whispered to each other, afraid we were missing a crucial detail—air-conditioned armpits, a trompe-l'œil placket—that distinguished it from the knit polos we’ve encountered before. “It is indeed a knit polo,” the winds of fate whispered to us. “But look closer, my children: it is a knit polo without any buttons.” With those three words, our lives (or, at least, or wardrobes) would never be the same.
Such is the power of the buttonless polo, a newly ubiquitous riff on the all-time summer staple we can’t stop recommending. If you’re the type of fella who already considers the buttons on his polos ornamental, ditching them for good shouldn’t be much of a stretch. That simple tweak lets the polo do what it does best: help you look pulled-together no matter where you find yourself—a fancy dinner date, an impromptu run-in with the in-laws—while saving you from the starchy clutches of a capital-D Dress shirt.
The true genius of buttonless polo shirts, though, is more practical in nature—and mercifully easy to understand. When the weather is this steamy, futzing with any extraneous details feels downright Sisyphean, especially when you're hustling out the door to hit the onslaught of rooftop hangs on your calendar. Combine that with the silhouette’s bicep-hugging, shoulder-swaddling sleeves, and it’s no wonder megawatt action stars can't get enough of it.
Simply pair one with pleated pants, loafers, and an A-list smile, and then toss on a necklace (or five) to eat up all that newfound real estate around your clavicle. It’s not rocket science—it’s smarter.