Is Rowing Only for the Rich? A Henley Winner Weighs In.

Our recent report on the Henley Royal Regatta sparked a serious debate about class and style. One commenter’s position that “people should know their place” in regards to attending and dressing for such high-end events struck a chord in particular. Which led us to wonder whether Henley and its ilk are really the bastions of unrepentant snobbery that some make them out to be. Many seem to be of the opinion that rowing is only for the rich, and that the “ridiculous” blazers worn by rowers and clubmen are merely a way of rubbing the proles’ noses in it. So we decided to ask Jack Carlson (photographed above by Jason Varney) to stick an oar in.

A three-time member of the U.S. national rowing team, Carlson has won the Henley Royal Regatta, the Head of the Charles Regatta, and the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. A native of Boston, he first began his rowing career as a coxswain at the Buckingham Browne & Nichols school in Cambridge, Mass., which was the first American high school to win at Henley in 1929. Last year he published Rowing Blazers, a gorgeous paean to the flamboyant garments that have occasioned so much criticism, with photography by F.E. Castleberry of Unabashedly Prep. Oh, and he also has a degree from Georgetown and a Ph.D. in archaeology from Oxford.

“The rowing blazer is designed to impress, intimidate, and influence in a game of sartorial one-upmanship,” Carlson tells ACL. “But it’s not about anything so mundane as socioeconomic class; it’s about letting other rowers and cognoscenti know what one has achieved in the sport and where one’s loyalties lie. Like the court liveries and heraldic devices of medieval Europe, the street gang colors of Compton, and the patches and badges of Boy Scouts and Hell’s Angels, rowing blazers are tribal totems, ceremonial vestments worn to emphasize both difference and belonging within their own little world.” (Ed. note – unless you have just bought yours on sale at Ralph Lauren.)

Regarding the controversial clothing, Carlson says: “The stripes, badges and binding might not be to everyone’s taste; but the rowing blazer isn’t about taste. And it’s certainly not about provoking comment-board class-warriors or drawing lines between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’” The first blazers worn by college rowing clubs at Oxford and Cambridge in the mid-19th century “served a practical purpose,” he notes, “keeping oarsmen warm during chilly training sessions. [But] even in this formative period, rowers seem to have developed a peculiar attachment to their jackets, not only wearing them in the boats but also incorporating them into their daily dress on terra firma.”

These rowers were “the world’s first true student-athletes,” Carlson says. “And like their successors—the stereotypical ‘jocks’ of twentieth-century America, who were inseparable from their hard-earned letterman sweaters or leather-sleeved varsity jackets—the earliest oarsmen probably started wearing their prototypical blazers in social settings for the sake of showing off their sporting prowess….The chosen colors and details comprised a code that revealed the college, club, and particular crew with which a rower was affiliated. But the loud colors also served the practical function of helping distant spectators tell which boat was which during races.”

Rowing blazers today “range from the understated to the absurd, and it is difficult to say which end of the spectrum is more prestigious,” Carlson notes. “Those worn by the top Oxford crew are plain dark blue with matching dark blue grosgrain trim; they do not feature any pocket badge at all, out of respect for the fact that Oxford University Boat Club’s blazer is the original ‘blue blazer.’ The blazers of the elite and enigmatic Cambridge Archetypals, meanwhile, are striped light blue, magenta, black, red, yellow, and indigo. The club’s ties, socks, caps, scarves, and even watchbands feature the same stripes.”

“Each nation has its own particular set of blazer rituals, which vary, of course, from club to club,” Carlson says. “In Britain, rowing blazers are de rigueur battle gear at riotous boat club dinners, garden parties, and traditional regattas. American oarsmen usually earn their coveted jackets only by winning a domestic championship or at the end of an undefeated regular season, when the crew will have blazers made up before heading across the Atlantic to compete at the Henley Royal Regatta. And in the Netherlands, rowing blazers are usually passed down from one generation of rowers to the next; they are almost universally ill fitting, threadbare, and filthy.” Now that must really have the hoi polloi scratching their heads.

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