The jacket began to be marketed as the Nehru jacket in Europe and America in the mid 1960s. It was briefly popular there in the late 1960s and early 1970s, its popularity spurred by the aspirational class' growing awareness of foreign cultures, by the minimalism of the Mod lifestyle and, in particular, by the Beatles.[3][4] Some were also worn by Roger Delgado's version of the renegade Time Lord known as the Master on the science fiction Doctor Who.

