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 Lacoste
Logo -
In the 1970-80s Lacoste teamed up with
IZOD and embroidered the Lacoste right-facing
“crocodile” logo on the left breast of a line of polo shirts and
jackets that became
perhaps the most recognizable apparel logo of the era (wore by
many 1980s TV characters).
Initially, the Lacoste
shirts were
introduced in 1933 by André Gillier, the owner and chairman of
the largest French hosiery company at that time, who set up a
company to mass produce a shirt embroidered with a logo that
the tennis champion (René Lacoste-1905-96)
had created for his personal use on the tennis courts. The
white, short-sleeve polo shirts
made exclusively of French cotton
pique revolutionized fashion
and soon replaced
the long-sleeved stiff, starchy
Oxford shirts traditionally worn
by players up to that time. The crocodile logo itself was born in 1926.
As Rene Lacoste recalled:
“The American press nicknamed me
'The
Crocodile' ("Le
Crocodile" or "l'Alligator"
in French)
after a bet that I made with the Captain of the
French Davis Cup team. He had promised me a crocodile-skin
suitcase if I won a match that was important for our team. The
American public stuck to this nickname, which highlighted my
tenacity on the tennis courts, never giving up my prey! So my
friend Robert George drew me a crocodile which was embroidered
on the blazer that I wore on the courts.”
An Early Lacosta Logo
The Lacoste Sportswear
firm is located in Troyes, France, “in the heart of the
Champagne region,” and runs its American business through
Lacoste USA. The sportswear line is sold only at such high-end
retailers as Saks 5th Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Bloomingdale's. The Lacoste-IZOD affiliation ended in 1993,
but Lacoste
re-entered the United State market with its own line — sporting
the famous crocodile logo — in 1996. In 2003,
the Idea Work-shop, garnered the exclusive rights to bring the
famous French line of Lacoste Sportswear. MKP Distributors also
launched Lacoste Pour Homme, an exclusive fragrance for men that
was emblazoned with an all-new silver-grey crocodile logo.
TRIVIA NOTE:
Rene Lacoste's polo shirts were the
first example of sportswear as "fashion."
Besides, his trademark crocodile logo, Rene Lacoste, the author
of Lacoste on Tennis (1928) also invented
the metal tennis racquet in 1963 which soon ended a long tradition of
wooden rackets on the tennis courts of the world.
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