first and foremost, let me stress that this is NOT a homage to king eric, or MU for that matter. but do u guys still remember him?
eric cantona: footballer, poet, actor, painter….
…. kung fu master…
… professional nose-picker…
he was voted MU’s player of the century in 2001. but it’s not about his footballing pedigree that i wanna talk about. it’s about the way he wears his polo jersey collar that has now been a fashonista’s iconic do. even here in good ol’ bolehdom.
remember this?
note the collar
or this one?
still keep ur eyes on the collar
or this great caricature?
look at the great detail of the up-ended collar
but really, guys, this fella is all about angst, chivalry, misunderstood soul and all that jazz. that’s why he quit football during his heydays. he’s a non-conformist in a very conformist world. that’s why he refused to play in the French national team. he has his reasons. that’s why he wears his collar like that. it’s been a perpetual piece of thorn in my finger when i see malaysian blokes wearing their polo shirt collar like that. even kids, i swear to u. yesterday i was in the pavilion, and later dinner at suzy’s corner near ampang jaya, and i counted at least 5 pre-adolescent kids wearing their collar up-ended. i guess to them (or their doting parents) it looks cool. to me we’re just parroting something that we don’t really understand.
it’s something like the punk movement (wat movement?) in malaysia. once i had the pleasure of having asked this 16 year old punk-nazi wannabe (who also happens to be a school drop out) near the klcc fountain why is it that he is what he is. he looked at me with gleaming eyes for a couple of second before answering:
“wa bebas, brader.. tak perlu ikut cakap mak ayah. tak perlu famili. ini famili wa (showing at his friends) … wa boleh wat apa wa suka. brader ada rokok tak? wa paw sebatang, leh?”
poetic, isn’t it? he don’t even know the philosophy behind the punk movement, let alone the history of punk. what he does is just parrot-fashioning his elder friends. i really do feel sorry for these hedonistic, swastika waving kids.
in the 50s when america was introduced to a grim faced, blonde haired, anti-alpha male hero named james dean, people stood up and took notice. 
it was soon cool to wear a body hugging white tees, denims and tight jeans, have one’s hair heavily greased with a remos (at least that’s wat my generation used to call it), and a cigarette perpetually dangling from the edge of one’s lip. it was cool to defy one’s parents and family, and seek solace amongst peers. it was cool for guys to shed a tear or two. it was an age when it’s cool to wear keds, driving around the mall and neighbourhood in a whitewall tyred cars, and with rock n roll blazing in the speaker. but they had their reasons. they had their raison d’etre.
wat i’m trying to say here is that polo shirts are NOT meant to be worn with its collars up-ended a’la bat wings. even if it’s meant as a fashion statement. u don’t wear ur office shirt with its collar up-ended, do u? every action must have reasons. and it can’t be (an answer i got from a middle aged man in the check-out line at Puchong Tesco) .. “saja je..”. a famous line by mr. wint and mr. kidd, psychotic assasins in the james bond movie ‘diamonds r 4ever’, after they’ve successfully blown up a plane, comes to mind: “If God have meant for men to fly… He wud’ve given them wings”.
in this context, if polo shirts were meant to be worn with their collars up-ended, their creators would ask the models to wear them as such.
