It would be easy to take The Rough for a vintage store, and the simplest way to explain why it isn't is to show what actually decides whether something ends up in a drop. It is never the year on the label. Some of what we pick was made in the eighties and some of it last season, and neither fact gets a piece in on its own.
What gets it in is one of four things, and usually more than one.
1. A print that stops you
Most golf clothing is designed not to be noticed, which is exactly why the exceptions are so good. We look for the stripe, the pattern or the colour block that makes you look twice from the other end of the range, as long as it looks deliberate rather than like a joke.
2. A fabric you can't stop touching
Sometimes you know before you have even seen the tag. A heavy cotton piqué, a soft knit or a dense jersey that feels good in your hand and still feels good after eighteen holes. Fabric tells you more about a garment than any logo can, whether it was made in 1991 or last year.
3. A story
Some pieces carry a place with them: the crest of a club someone travelled to, the name of a tournament, a year. We can rarely tell you who wore a shirt and we never claim it unless we can prove it, but a logo that ties a piece to a course or a week in golf is a good reason to bring it in. We wrote more about that in Reading the logo.
4. Or simply how damn good it looks
Sometimes none of the above applies and a piece still earns its place, because it looks right on the first tee in the morning and at the table the same evening. That test sits underneath everything else we do, and it comes down to one question: would we still want it if the label meant nothing?
What doesn't count
Age on its own doesn't count, and neither does a famous name or a bit of nostalgia. Plenty of golf clothing from the nineties deserves to stay there, and we would rather open a drop with fewer pieces than pad it out with things we wouldn't wear ourselves.
Drop 001 opens on 11.11 at 19:00 CET, and everyone who signs up gets early access.