Ask your high school nemesis: all jocks eventually grow up, and so do their wardrobes. Or skip the trip down memory lane and just ask Bradley Cooper—earlier this week, the hardcore sports fanatic helped a classic rugby shirt graduate from the junior leagues to the pros.
On the set of Is This Thing On?, his latest directing gig, the actor wore a green and white rugby from About Blank’s spring-summer 2024 collection, an eye-grabbing riff on the GQ-favorite spring staple rendered in heavyweight cotton and equipped with a telltale contrasting collar.
Cooper’s rugby shirt is a far cry from the skin-tight jerseys typically worn today. Instead, it harks back to a bygone era of the game, when players took to the pitch looking more like retro J.Crew models than modern-day blokes. So when we say it’s the type of rugby shirt players would’ve worn when they were still allowed to take smoke breaks at half time, we mean it as the highest compliment possible.
MEGA
About Blank understands the dueling tension between old and new especially well. The London-based streetwear label imbues its preppy-leaning wares with a breath of fresh air by tweaking their silhouettes, cropping a hem here or blowing up the proportions there. For Cooper, a somewhat surprising streetwear aficionado and wholly unsurprising sports buff, it’s a perfect match.
Cooper, of course, is no stranger to the type of run-of-the-mill sports merch available on the Fanatics site. (His commitment to the Philadelphia Eagles is especially legendary.) But this is also a guy who sits front row at Louis Vuitton shows, so a rugby shirt with a bit more flair feels entirely in his wheelhouse. Not sure what to wear while spring dukes it out with winter for control of your closet? You could do a lot worse than ripping a page from the Bradley Cooper playbook and hunkering down in a grown-man rugby shirt of your own.
4 Great Rugby Shirts That Belong on Cooper’s Radar
This story originally appeared on British GQ.