It might be a stretch to pin it on the red shirt that showed up at the O'Donnell house back in the mid-1970s, but the fact remains, there was a red shirt.
"I remember my mom and dad went on a trip," says Winnetka native John O'Donnell, whose line of Johnnie-O active wear, dubbed "West Coast preppy," is popping up in boutiques and golf pro shops across the country. "I was probably about 11 years old, and they went to the Arizona Biltmore hotel. Mom came back with a shirt she had bought for me, a red golf shirt from the Arizona Biltmore hotel. It was an old-school Pickering-style shirt, and I don't have it anymore, but I bet it would look a lot like the shirts I'm doing today."
For the sartorially challenged, Pickering refers to the classic polo shirt style that guys like Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus wore (looser sleeves, bigger collars), as opposed to the more fitted and modern-looking polos worn by, say, JFK Jr. and Ralph Lauren. Pickering is more Penguin than Polo, more golf than tennis.
That is why it was such a hit with the young John O'Donnell, who is now a 44-year-old bachelor living in Los Angeles, close to his younger sister, Angela, and "little brother," Chris, the actor famous for his roles in two Batman movies and Scent of a Woman; John O'Donnell lived and breathed golf as a kid.
A scratch golfer today, he has qualified for two U.S. Amateur tournaments. He shot a staggering 66 at a celebrity tournament with Chris a few years ago at the Bel-Air Country Club, played varsity golf at UCLA and has won his club championship in Los Angeles three of the last five years.
These days he dons his own designs on the course - the classic, relaxed preppy threads of Johnnie-O, emblazoned with a surfer logo - but back in the days of the red shirt, he played Exmoor Country Club in Highland Park. Before that, he honed his skills via the Winnetka Park District.
"I lived at the Winnetka Park District par-3 golf course," he says. "I was there from sunup to sundown."
John O'Donnell never imagined he would be making a living selling clothes - not back in the mid-1970s when he first donned that red shirt in Winnetka, not even five years ago when he was helping a friend in Los Angeles turn out promotional T-shirts and hats. O'Donnell's inspiration was more entrepreneurial than anything. He saw an opportunity, and he pursued it.
"It's almost ironic that I'm in the apparel business," he says. "I like clothes, and I like to dress nice, but I've never been big into fashion. My main drive was, 'How can I be my own boss, and how can I run my own company, whether it's clothes or lampshades?' I saw what I thought was a potential niche that combined the preppy with the surf, so I sketched out a logo - actually my brother-in-law did - and I literally taped and glued some shirts together."
Since then, those shirts (and shorts, belts, hats and other items; see www.johnnie-o.com), all marked by the Johnnie-O surfer logo - a guy standing next to his long board, shading the sun with his hand - have been popping up in the most visible places: on the pages of LIFE and Golf Digest, on the backs and heads and waists of Hollywood's Ryan Seacrest, Luke Wilson and Adrian Grenier.
"John is a total salesman," Chris O'Donnell says. "He can sell anything. Out here [in Los Angeles], everybody wears his stuff."
John O'Donnell refined those sales skills for nearly two decades before entering the apparel business, first selling radio advertising in Wisconsin and then selling television ads for Fox Sports Chicago. In 1997, the fledgling Golf Channel invited him to work for them in Los Angeles. So he went back to his college town and for the past 12 years has lived there, close to his two younger siblings. There are four older siblings, too.
There is Julie, who has three kids and lives in Winnetka, and Sally, the mother of two in St. Louis. There is Libby, who has five kids in Connecticut, and Bill, the father of four in Barrington. (In Los Angeles, Angela is the mother of four, and Chris, the youngest O'Donnell child, is the father of five.)
"I have 23 nieces and nephews," John says. "So I have plenty of kids to model my clothes when I need them to."
Someday he might even have kids of his own. Last summer People magazine included him in its most-eligible-bachelors issue. Scores of interested women got in touch with John when the article came out, and the introductions turned into a few dates. But nothing clicked long-term.
"I'll get there someday, but for now it just hasn't happened," he says. "It's not something you can rush. I'm not getting any younger, either."
If there is any family pressure for the only unmarried O'Donnell to settle down, it's coming mainly from the clan's next generation.
"Chris' 8-year-old daughter wants to be a flower girl at my wedding," John told People in the 2008 bachelor issue. "My nieces and nephews want me to be married off even more than my brothers and sisters. But I haven't felt it yet. I'm pretty at ease with my life."
He's got his business, his golf, his friends and family.
"My family is my world, the essence of who I am," John told People.
That family was a tight group growing up on White Oak Lane near Willow Road in Winnetka. There were seven kids in 10 years, including two sets of "Irish twins," or kids born within 12 months of each other. The O'Donnell kids rode their bikes to grade school at Faith, Hope and Charity. The boys later attended Loyola Academy, while the girls went to either Woodlands Academy or New Trier. John and Chris shared a bedroom until the day John left for college. Everybody worked.
"My parents both had a middle-of-the-road upbringing," John says. "And while we lived in an upscale neighborhood, they instituted a middle-of-the-road, work-hard attitude, and it played out well for us. You can get lazy if you're given too much at an early age, and I think that's an easy thing to do in a place like Winnetka or other parts of the North Shore. It's not like we were out slaving every weekend, but we had to be accountable for what we were given.
"I spent a lot of time cutting grass. I spent four years caddying. Gosh, we had paper routes; the girls babysat a ton. Some of them were camp counselors. Some of them worked waiting tables. Chris got into modeling. He found the high-ticket job."
To this day, John says the greatest support comes from his family.
"We're not the Brady Bunch," he says, "but for most part we get along pretty well."
Locally, Johnnie-O clothes have made it into the pro shops at Onwentsia (Lake Forest), Shore Acres (Lake Bluff) and Evanston country clubs. John says there are a few more Chicago-area outlets, but not nearly enough.
"We need more, I'll tell you that," he says.
That is what makes this job so interesting, so satisfying. The workload, which John shares with two employees, involves sales, management, the occasional picking out of new colors, and some minor design work. It suits the lifestyle that O'Donnell wants at this stage in his life, and it mirrors the style of clothing he sells - conservative but also relaxed.
"I'm not here to say we're doing anything incredibly innovative," he says. "You know, I'm not making wedding gowns or anything requiring incredible design. This is just classic, preppy clothing - the kind that was in my closet 20 years ago and is still in it today.
"I want our clothes to be stuff that you can wear year after year. I don't want it to be the 'in' thing, and then it's gone. Some of my favorite shirts in my closet are just old polo shirts that I've had for 10 years or longer. And I don't want my clothes to be too cool because that can put you in a fad state. My clothes are conservative, but not too conservative. People have been wearing horses and alligators and penguins for years, and they will continue to wear them. We're just the latest version of that. So instead of a shrimp or a whale or an anchor or a kite, we put that little surfer guy on it."
And what about that surfer guy? He's got his board, and he is shielding his eyes from the sun, but which direction is he looking?
"People see that differently," John says. "Some people think he's standing at the edge of the water. He's just come in from surfing, and he's looking back at the beach. The way I see it, he's looking out at the surf."
It calls to mind a kid in a red Arizona Biltmore polo shirt, skinny golf bag slung over his shoulder, wondering what lies ahead.
