What Michel Rouen makes, and who it is for

Michel Rouen has been making this collar since 2021, and the range still starts from it. That sounds like a slogan until you stand in front of a wardrobe at seven in the morning with a tee time at eight and lunch with somebody afterwards. The shirt has to dry between the ninth and the car, come out of a bag without a crease, hold its collar after a season of washing, and not look like sportswear at a table. That is a narrow set of demands, and a polyester knit with a little spandex in it is the answer almost every golf brand has arrived at. What is left to decide is the collar, the placket, the run of sizes and the colour, and that is what this catalogue is about.

What we make

The polo shelf is where people arrive: eleven cuts in a hundred and sixteen colourways, split by how loud they are rather than by fabric. Stripes are the widest part of it, from a fine pin stripe that reads as a solid at any distance to two-tone blocks that get remembered. Jacquards knit the pattern into the cloth instead of printing it on, so a jacquard reads plain from six feet and has something going on up close. One cut carries a chest pocket. Beside them the long sleeve shelf runs the same collar to the wrist, part of it knitted to UPF 50+ rather than the 30+ that covers most of the range. Over the top: quarter zip pullovers, a mock neck that sits flat under a vest, and a heavier sweatshirt cut. Then the vests, softshell and windproof with five pockets or light enough to fold into a bag. Below the waist: two trouser cuts sized by waist and leg, one lined with fleece for January and one cut as a stretch dress trouser, and a single flat-front short with eight pockets and a zip on one of them. And the boys' shelf, which is the striped polo in age bands.

The figures on the card are the second idea. A size run is printed as that piece is actually made, so a cut that stops at 3XL says so on its own card while the two that run to 5XL say that. The colourway count is printed because it is the difference between a shirt with three colours and the print cut with twenty-seven. Pockets are counted and the zipped one is named, because on a short that is the pocket the car key goes in. On the trousers both numbers appear, waist and leg, because 34x30 and 34x34 are two different purchases. A UPF figure is printed only where the label carries one, and it is described in the words the body that sets the scale uses for that band.

Who it is cut for

You, if the round happens before the rest of the day rather than instead of it. The two mistakes this catalogue is arranged to prevent are ordering a letter from a shirt you bought six years ago and ordering a trouser waist without the leg. Take a chest measurement over the shirt you actually play in, measure a pair of trousers you already like from the crotch seam to the hem, and the shelves turn into a filter. The layers here are cut to stack in the same letter: a polo, a quarter zip over it and a vest over that all take the size you take in the polo, and sizing the outer layer up is what makes the whole thing hang badly on a swing.

Most of the range is cut S to 3XL, with two polo cuts running to 5XL, and the trousers cover waist 30 to 42 with the leg in 30, 32 or 34. Prices run from under ten dollars for a shirt in an older colourway to fifty for a lined winter trouser. The middle of the catalogue, meaning most of the polos, the quarter zips and the vests, sits between twenty and forty, and that is where most people start.

What we will and will not say

A card describes a garment: what it is knitted from, what it is cut to, how many colourways it exists in, where the pockets are and which one zips, and what the label says about sun. How it feels on a fifth hour in August is yours to judge, and these pages leave it to you. You will not find a comfort rating anywhere on this site, because what you feel depends on the wind and on whether you are walking or riding, and a number printed against a shirt would be a guess made on your behalf. Where a page leans on a rule or on public advice, whether that is fibre labelling, care labelling or what a UPF figure means, it is written under a named source, read on the date printed beside it, and the figure is explained where it stops rather than rounded up.

The one verifiable thing we say about ourselves is the year, 2021. Everything else you might want to know about a piece is on its card, and how the figures on those cards are kept current is set out on how we update the catalogue.