The neck opening of a garment has always sported signifiers of status, due to its proximity to the face, always visible in a meeting or a portrait. Those signifiers include neckties, frilly lace collars, jewelry, plunging necklines, and more. But nothing says "artsy" like a black turtleneck shirt. It can also say "cool" or "avant-garde" or "pretentious," depending on who is wearing it.
There’s an obvious question here: How did a basic item of clothing come to accumulate such lofty signifiers? The answer lies in its very simplicity. The turtleneck’s appeal rests largely on what it is not: It makes the classic shirt-and-tie combination look priggish and the T-shirt appear formless and slobbish, hitting that otherwise inaccessible sweet spot between formality and insouciance. It is sufficiently smart to be worn under a suit jacket, yet casual and comfortable enough for repeated everyday wear. Developed in the late 19th century as a practical garment for polo players (hence the British name for it: the “polo neck”), it was originally a utilitarian design largely worn by sportsmen, laborers, sailors, and soldiers. But by the dawn of the 20th century, European proto-bohemians were already seeing possibilities in the garment’s elegant functionality, which chimed harmoniously with embryonic modernist design ideals.
Appropriately, the website Artsy has a history of the rise and fall and resurrection of the turtleneck collar, who wore them, and what it means. -via Metafilter