Why We Started with Polo

When we began looking more closely at bridle design, polo wasn’t an obvious place to start. But it quickly became an interesting one.

Polo asks a lot of both horse and equipment. Horses gallop, stop, turn and change direction at speed, often several times within a matter of seconds. The rider needs to communicate quickly while managing a mallet in one hand and the reins in the other. And the bridle has to accommodate everything needed to make all of that work. The result is a setup that can become surprisingly complex.

Look closely at a polo pony’s tack and there is a great deal going on. In addition to the saddle and girth, there is a also the bridle that includes the bit, reins, draw reins, cavesson; a standing martingale, breast plate and, depending on the horse and rider, a drop noseband as well. The bridle setup in particular was rather complex. For us, that made the polo bridle particularly interesting from a design perspective.

Could the same function be achieved more simply? Could individual components work together more effectively? Could fit be considered more carefully without making the equipment complicated for the people who actually have to use it? In our first bridle, for example, the drop noseband hangs from the cavesson rather than carrying its own strap over the poll: one function kept, one layer removed. Questions like that became the starting point.

Made for Polo

Polo players ride several horses in a game. Grooms may manage multiple strings for one team: preparing horses, changing equipment, cooling down ponies, warming up others and making adjustments between chukkers, all within minutes and all while keeping one eye on their players in the field.

That matters. Thinking about the horse also means thinking about the people responsible for that horse and its tack. It’s one of the reasons we've spent time not only looking at horses, but talking to the people around them.

Many of the principles behind good bridle making aren’t specific to any discipline. Materials matter. Construction matters. Fit matters. And the anatomy underneath doesn’t change because a horse happens to be playing polo.

The context, however, does. Equipment evolves around the needs and traditions of a sport, and polo has developed its own solutions over generations. We weren’t interested in changing those simply for the sake of making something different. We wanted to understand them. Which elements are essential to function? Which exist because of the particular demands of polo? And where might there be room to make something simpler or more considered?

A Good Place to Begin

Polo gave us a useful challenge: take a familiar piece of equipment, understand what the sport requires from it, and look at it again from the perspective of the horse and the people using it every day. That process eventually became Polo SWAP, our first bridle.

Starting with polo doesn’t mean ending there. Many of the questions it has raised extend far beyond a single discipline. But sometimes a very specific problem is a good place to start.