School portraits / Senior year · September 2026
At Lovett, the Old Senior Polos Are Going Extinct
Atlanta seniors love the discontinued uniform shirts with piping on the collar. So they inherit them, with family trees, and in one case a sister apologized for not saving any.
In September 2026 a senior at the Lovett School in Atlanta wrote in the student paper, the OnLion, about the senior uniform. Lovett's campus store still sells it. But the old-style polos, with contrasting piping around the collar and sleeves, have been discontinued, and the new ones have no piping. Seniors, she reported, love the piping. One told her they were all stressed because the shirts were "going extinct."
So the polos are inherited. The writer's best friend, who graduated in 2026, passed down three polos and three skirts. Those had belonged to the friend's older sister, then to a pair of twins, then back to the friend. After graduation, the writer plans to pass them to her friend's youngest sister.
A polo with a provenance. Somewhere there is a shirt that has been through more transitions of power than some countries.
Her own older sister, class of 2020, had saved no polos at all. When asked, the sister said: "I'm sorry! I didn't know they were endangered."
Every closet clean-out I have ever done has destroyed a habitat I did not know about.
Other families planned ahead. One senior wears white polos and skirts from 2018, saved by her mother so her younger daughter could wear the same uniform almost ten years later. A senior boy wears his brother's polo and is glad it still has the old logo, a circle with an L. Others ordered plain piped shirts online and had them embroidered to match the old ones; one mother ordered a batch and her son handed them out to his friends.
And the white polos are the scarcest of all, because at the end of Senior Week, seniors paint them with the logo of the college they will attend. Once a shirt has a university on it, it is out of circulation.
So the rarest shirt in the school is the one everyone is required to paint. That is a bold conservation policy.
Last spring my wife gave away four bags of the eldest's old clothes. This fall, the eldest, a junior, has been asking about one specific gray hoodie from eighth grade. It is in a donation bin somewhere, and the youngest, who was supposed to inherit it, has been asking about it too.
I'm sorry. We didn't know it was endangered.
Sources
The public records, school pages and published accounts this story draws on. Where the story imagines a scene or a line of dialogue, that is the column’s telling, not a quotation.
- Maiya Tomlin — Seniors Pass Down Fan-Favorite Uniforms thelovettonlion.com
- Malaya Madison — RAFT 2026: Learning And Laughing On The River thelovettonlion.com
- Lovett public parent and student reviews niche.com