Golf has had a dress code problem for a long time. Not because the clothes were bad, some of it was well-made, but because the whole system was built around signaling membership in something exclusive. The right polo. The right trouser. The right club. It was clothing as credential.
That’s loosening up, and the brands driving it are more interesting than the trend pieces about them usually suggest.
What changed
Malbon Golf is the clearest example of the shift. Stephen and Erica Malbon started in 2017 with the premise that golf should connect to the same culture that produces music, art, and fashion, not exist separately from it behind a dress code. The result looks less like traditional golf apparel and more like the clothing of someone who happens to also play golf. Which is most golfers, actually.
Manors Golf took a different approach: less about connecting golf to broader culture and more about removing the performance pressure from the game itself. Comfort over stats. Enjoyment over optimization. It’s a small philosophical shift that shows up in everything from the fit to the way they talk about the product.
Students Golf is doing something similar, stripping the formality from the aesthetic and making golf feel accessible to people who grew up in streetwear rather than country clubs. The name says it all.
The local version
The part of this I find most interesting is happening closer to home. In Wisconsin, a couple of brands are making the same argument at a smaller scale and doing it well.
Good Lion Golf runs on a simple mantra: Good over Safe. They’re making garment-dyed hoodies, denim golf hats, performance gear that reads as well off the course as on it. The origin story involves a genuinely impulsive decision on a Chicago tee box that turned into a brand philosophy, which is exactly how the best things start.
Long Weekend Golf Club is doing something different, less a brand than a community space. An actual shop built around independent brands and good design, with room to gather and talk and discover things you’d usually only find online. They carry Backswing Bottle Co., which started with the simple observation that water bottles on a course are usually ugly and don’t need to be.
Both of these are doing exactly what the bigger casual golf brands are doing, but with the specific texture of the place they’re from. That’s harder to manufacture than a logo and more durable than a collaboration.
The dress code didn’t disappear because someone decided it was unfair. It loosened because the people who found it pointless just started building their own thing alongside it.
The DMA* read
I don’t make golf apparel. But the underlying dynamic here is something I think about with everything I build. A category that was locked behind gatekeeping and exclusivity opens up when people start making things for themselves instead of asking permission.
Golf took longer than most categories to get here. But the pattern is the same: the stuff that lasts is made by people who actually care about the thing, not people who care about the credential.
Good Lion and Long Weekend are worth paying attention to. They’re building something real in a place most people overlook, which is usually where the interesting work happens.