The very first Advertising campaign from Lacoste back in 1933
Bonjour Style Trekers and welcome to a, particularly Gallic post today to celebrate an amazing milestone in the history of an exceptional brand. So without further ado, Happy Birthday Lacoste ! or Joyeaux Anniversaire for you linguistic sticklers. So what you gonna do for your birthday crocodile ?
Well, a whole host of celebrating 80 years of evolution, revisiting, reinventing and renewing of glamour, essentially.
It all started on a tennis court in 1933 when French tennis champion René Lacoste, or “the Crocodile” performed viva la revolution of men’s fashion by replacing the classical woven, long-sleeved starched shirt with a light and comfortable short-sleeved one in airy petit piqué fabric, better known today as the classic LACOSTE polo shirt.
Authenticity, audacity, empathy and a certain “joie de vivre”
inherited from the 30s are the four pillars that made LACOSTE a successful worldwide fashion brand. Today the iconic Croc insignia has more than 1160
boutiques throughout 110 countries, selling two items every second !!!!
Yes, all good and well, but what are the brand going to do to celebrate this historic event ? Well, first in the series of projects is, EDITION – a capsule collection of classic iconic Lacoste items inspired by images taken from the archive.
Next up we have, the Custom Polo shirt, the brand has created 12 very special limited edition custom polo kits, which, lets face it are bound for collectors item status. So throughout 2013, Lacoste will propose each month one custom polo kit, distributed exclusively in an F-Store available on the LACOSTE Facebook page (Facebook.com/Lacoste). Fans will have the opportunity to customise a white L.12.12 polo shirt using different techniques such as coloring, sewing, embroidery, flocking or graffiti.
Talk about saving the best for last and personally my favourite of the projects. Lacoste to commemorate 80 stylish years, invited the celebrated British designer Peter Saville, yes the same man responsible for designing some of the most memorable album covers EVER, including Closer by Joy Division, Happy Mondays’ Pills, Thrills and Bellyaches and responsible for designing the Identity logo to the best city in the UK, Manchester. Saville was asked to create a symbol to represent this milestone in the Brand’s history. Peter, of course, successfully rose to the challenge with a specially crafted 80th Anniversary Logo.
The resulting motif elegantly epitomises 80 years of Lacoste history with a contemporary vision. Peter worked alongside Lacoste Creative Director, Felipe Oliveira Baptista and Lacoste Design Director, Christophe Pillet to translate his celebratory configuration of circles forming a symbolic ‘80’ numeral which is designed to frame a multiplicity of visual content.
