P – ‘Popping’ your collar
‘Popping’ the collar on your shirt or polo shirt is just another phrase for turning the collar up on your shirt or polo shirt. This is a universal trend which can be seen on American frat boys, and throughout all the British classes whether you wear Polo Ralph Lauren, Lyle and Scott or Topman to name a few offenders. From here on in I will refer to just the polo shirt.
The polo shirt owes its origins to René Lacoste, the French 7 time Grand Slam tennis champion. Lacoste decided that the tennis attire at the time was uncomfortable and a hindrance and set about designing a white, short-sleeved loosely knit piqué cotton shirt, with an unstarched, flat, protruding collar, a buttoned placket, and a longer shirt-tail in back than at the front (to prevent the shirt from being pulled out of the wearer’s trousers or shorts). This new design was then adopted by polo players who previously wore thick long-sleeve cotton shirts and in turn designers began making shirts in the style that Lacoste had created only to refer to them as ‘polo shirts’ and where Lacoste had a small crocodile emblem for his brand on the left breast of the shirt, the polo shirts had that of a polo player atop a horse.
The advantages of Lacoste’s shirt design over the original tennis shirt was that; the piqué cotton breathed, the soft collar could be loosened easily by unbuttoning the placket, the short, cuffed sleeves would not annoy the player as would the rolled up long sleeved shirts and the collar could be turned up to block the sun from the player’s neck.
So there is no reason for you to ‘pop’ your collar, other than the desire to seem like a rebel for disregarding the usual style in which a polo shirt is worn.
Exceptions where this faux pas is acceptable
When it is sunny, and there is no shade and you do not want your neck to burn. That’s it.