Match Point: A Conversation With Christophe Lemaire Of LACOSTE

Perhaps in cheerful serendipity or coincidental rivalry, designers simultaneously paraded sportswear pieces down the Spring/Summer 2010 runway– Thankoon’s crepe dress has enough attitude to hang ten, Alexander Wang takes the American classic sweatshirt for a cut-out spin and dared all to take couture to the football field (or vice versa), Marc Jacobs urged all to run, scream and play in hooded cotton jumpsuits… While luxury sportswear is a budding concept for many labels this season (making sporadic appearances on scene at best), French heritage sportswear label, LACOSTE, has been running the sportswear line on the runway for close to a decade and championing sports and style for almost 80 years. LACOSTE’s Creative Director, Christophe Lemaire, has been taking LACOSTE’s heritage sporting pieces beyond the playing fields since he took the helm in 2000. Since then, the label has stood out against other runway players with a tangible sportswear heritage to draw from as opposed to airy doses of retrieved inspiration that fade and change from season to season. And exactly how does Lemaire manage to do that? In his own words, “We just have to imagine what [Lacoste] would be wearing if he were still alive”.

To understand the new French chic decorum of Lemaire’s LACOSTE today, it is imperative to go back to the very beginning – in the form of a beautifully crafted alligator suitcase. As the story goes, Rene Lacoste, the tennis great and victor of Davis Cup, French Open, Wimbledon and U.S. Open, made a bet in the late 1920s with the captain of the French Davis Cup team. The wager entailed that the captain buy Lacoste the alligator suitcase if Lacoste won an important match for the team. After a stunning victory, Lacoste walked away with the suitcase and a new nickname, “the Alligator”, which was coined by American press. The nickname came from the suitcase anecdote and reflected Lacoste’s tenacity on court which resembled the ferocity of a crocodile. Since then, “The Alligator” has become an indispensable epithet which will go on to inspire the logo of Lacoste’s eponymous sartorial venture in 1933, when the tennis doyen partnered up with Andre Giller (owner and chairman of the largest knitwear manufacturing firm in France at that time) to create some logo embroidered “jersey petit pique” polo shirt for Lacoste’s own use. And as for the logo design, Lacoste turned his beloved epithet into an icon which has since transgressed off courts, off polo shirts and evolved into a lifestyle empire led by Lemaire.