A Grass Green Fred Perry Polo Shirt, Dyed With Actual Grass
When British fashion designer Craig Green decided to explore Fred Perry’s vast tennis legacy, he went literal. So literal that the physical components that make up a tennis court are used to dye each one of his new limited-edition polo shirts.
Starting life as a white three-button polo shirt, each top is initially decorated only through fluorescent yellow trims and branding, a color picked to be evocative of a tennis ball. Then, it goes through Green’s natural dye system.
There are three natural dyes Green is adding to these polo shirts: There is grass, famously found on the court at Wimbledon, red clay which is more commonly found on courts in Europe and Latin America, and deep gray chalk representing the chalk-dusted baselines of tennis courts.
Once dyed, these previously stark white tops take on the colors of those three materials, each wearing different imperfections as a result of the natural dying process. It has that distinct depth of color that only comes with these kinds of natural, rustic processes.
The remnants of the plain white polo that existed before are also visible under the fold of the collar and the button-down placket where the dye did not reach.
Marking the second release from Craig Green and Fred Perry’s continued collaboration, the natural-dyed polo shirts are available now from Fred Perry and select retailers.
Having begun his Fred Perry line through polos with two collars and quilted constructions, Green follows up with more ways of experimenting with the humble, simple polo shirt. It’s all very unconventional stuff, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from a Craig Green collaboration.
