Le Polo LACOSTE, emblème…
…de la mode TENNIS.
Innovation technique à son époque, la chemisette polo créée en 1933 par René Lacoste est devenue le symbole de la mode d’inspiration tennis et des valeurs de la marque au crocodile : authenticité et élégance décontractée.
1927, l’année de ses victoires en Coupe Davis, à Roland Garros et à l’US Open, René Lacoste, décide d’en finir avec les chemises de ville à manches longues portées par les tennismen. Son but ? Mieux supporter la chaleur des tournois américains et prévenir les coups de froid à répétition dont il est victime. «Il me fallait quelque chose de plus pratique et de plus sain, expliquait le mousquetaire. J’ai alors pensé aux chemisettes de polo qui étaient faites dans un tissu plus doux, à manches courtes (…) et j’ai demandé à un chemisier d’y ajouter un col.»
LA GENÈSE DU L.12.12
En 1933, le champion crée sa propre marque avec l’industriel André Gillier, propriétaire d’une bonneterie basée à Troyes. Le produit est baptisé L.12.12, (L pour Lacoste, 1 pour désigner la matière, à savoir le coton petit piqué, 2 pour le modèle à manches courtes, 12 pour le nombre d’essais avant de parvenir au produit choisi). Moins longue, dotée de manches courtes et bords-côtes, la chemisette libère le mouvement. Son succès est aussi dû à une structure très particulière. Le jersey petit piqué et ses mailles en alvéoles lui donnent une texture plus souple, légère mais aussi aérée, qui laisse respirer la peau et absorbe la transpiration. Outre l’innovation, la griffe met en avant la longévité de son produit phare. La sélection d’un coton à fibres longues et fines ou encore la réalisation de chaque polo à partir d’un même lot dont on extrait deux fils tricotés ensemble garantissent, selon elle, la qualité du vêtement ainsi qu’une meilleure finition des couleurs, plus résistantes au lavage.
Du blanc aux 65 couleurs
Popularisée dans les années 30, la chemisette polo devient la norme sur les courts dans les années 50 et s’impose dans le vestiaire «sportswear». Jusque-là, celle-ci n’a qu’une seule teinte, le blanc des tenues des joueurs de Wimbledon et de Roland Garros. L’apparition de la couleur dès 1951 marque un nouveau tournant. Les Bleu marine, rouge et autres coloris ouvrent alors la voie à un foisonnement de couleurs. Aujourd’hui l’un des atouts de Lacoste, qui compte désormais près de 65 tons différents. À l’instar de Fred Perry et du Coq Sportif, d’autres marques décident de créer leur propre polo et contribuent à faire du vêtement l’emblème du vestiaire de l’élégance estampillés tennis.
Modèle Écolo et polo en porcelaine
En l’espace de 80 ans, la chemisette Lacoste est aussi devenue le symbole de la marque, qui se plaît à le décliner régulièrement sous toutes les formes possibles, souvent en guise de clin d’oeil : modèles stretch, «Éco polo» en coton organique et teint d’indigo naturel, «Techno Polo» en fibre de métal et de lurex, et même un modèle en porcelaine. Des modèles «fantaisie», aux éditions limitées, qui soulignent par contraste la permanence d’un polo peu changé depuis ses origines. Véritable lien avec son passé, la griffe met aujourd’hui en avant son nom de code initial, le fameux «L 12.12», pour incarner ses valeurs.
Une certaine conception de l’élégance, décontractée, authentique et simple, entre l’élitisme de la Belle Epoque et les diktats actuels de la mode.
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By 1980 it was crystal clear: “The sport shirt of choice is Lacoste,” declared The Official Preppy Handbook. “Only the all-cotton model will do, the one with cap sleeves with the ribbed edging, narrow collar and two-button placket (never buttoned).”
How did a French shirt with a crocodile for a logo become the go-to preppy polo? Our story both begins and ends with the initials RL.
French tennis great René Lacoste was an innovator on and off the court. With a smart rearcourt-based game, he won 10 major titles and made 51 Davis Cup appearances as part of a quartet of French tennis legends revered to this day as The Four Musketeers. After retiring he developed the first metal tennis racquet and tinkered with golf club designs. His New York Times obituary noted that he kept working on racquet patents and painting landscapes until his death in Southwest France in 1996.
Lacoste gave the world his namesake shirt in 1929. The OPH is right to call it a sport shirt, for Lacoste developed it as an alternative to the more constricting tennis shirts of the 1920s. Cotton piqué fabric and a button placket provided comfort and breathability. Sleeves with elastic ribbed edging stayed in place while players moved. These features appealed to American tennis and golf players, says Alan Flusser, where the brand began appearing in the 1950s. Flusser also notes the rack (soft) collar and longer tails of the shirt, which helped it stay tucked.
Simply stated, Lacoste’s original shirt is the polo as we know it today. But for its time it was revolutionary, right down to the logo on the left breast, which was a first. By the time it arrived Stateside, “There was no classic, singular polo shirt,” says Flusser. Competing sport shirts of the era from Allen Solly, Lyle & Scott and others were generally more drapey, fully fashioned and made of synthetic fabrics, such as Joseph Bancroft & Sons’s “Ban-Lon.” These polyester shirts “had a slick, sleek handle, were rather shiny and not very porous,” according to G. Bruce Boyer. Not the sort of thing that served you well for a round of doubles at the club.
Lacoste was initially available in the States in “elite specialty shops in Palm Beach, Newport and Southampton,” remembers Richard Press of the J. Press family, in addition to “favored pro shops at private clubs.” J. Press began carrying the shirts in the early ’70s, “after years of Fred Perry, when the distributorship of Perry started to fade and ownership passed out of Perry’s hands.” Lacoste’s US sales rep “agreed to restrict distribution so as to restrain competition with certain of our opposition,” says Press.
Several factors accounted for Lacoste’s popularity among the prep set. Press highlights the shirt’s quality, nation of origin, fit, design and “brilliant colorings.” Flusser theorizes that the French sizing was an insider’s status symbol that enhanced the shirt’s appeal. And for Boyer, the timing was just right for the shirt’s popularity: By the ’70s Lacoste “was worn by every college golf and tennis team player, probably because it was a well made shirt and had the imprimatur of an historic tennis pro.”
Then there’s the ferocious crocodile logo. Often mistaken for an alligator, it comes from the nickname Monsieur Lacoste earned on the court, where he outlasted rather than overwhelmed opponents. Perhaps it too was a factor in the shirt’s popularity among preps, whose fondness for critters on their clothing is well known.
Lacoste himself could not fully explain it, but he seemed to think the very unlikeliness of it was part of the appeal. “I suppose you could say that if it had been a really nice animal, something sympathetic, then maybe nothing would have happened,” he said in a 1973 interview. “Suppose I had picked a rooster. Well, that’s French, but it doesn’t have the same impact.”
Competitors such as Le Tigre followed in the ’70s. But it was another innovator with the same initials whose polo shirt would come to dominate the market: Ralph Lauren.
Flusser, who is writing a book about Lauren, says the Lacoste polo “was clearly the inspiration for Ralph’s shirt.” It had all the same features when it first appeared in 1972, except of course with a polo player for a logo instead of a crocodile.
If René gave us the polo shirt as we know it, Ralph — “with his brilliant public fashion instinct,” as Press puts it — gave us the broad selection of polos in every imaginable color, pattern and design we now see in stores. Polo’s polo was also well-made in a way that Lacoste’s, as its popularity soared in the ’70s and quality control declined, ceased to be. Polo was Lacoste, only better.
What Lauren did not bequeath was the designation of this particular style shirt as a “polo shirt.” That comes from the fact that polo players took to wearing them during matches, notes Flusser. Of course, the polo shirt is not to be confused with the “Original Polo Button-Down Shirt,” otherwise known as the classic Brooks Brothers oxford, which was inspired by John Brooks’ attending a polo match “where he observed the players’ shirts secured with buttons to keep them from flapping in the wind.”
In any event, Lauren’s shirt became the cornerstone of the Polo empire. Lacoste’s, meanwhile, disappeared from the shelves of J. Press and the mainstream retailers that came to carry it, although a revival of the Lacoste brand over the past decade would make the shirts widely available once again.
Indeed, the Lacoste polo is alive and well in France today. At the French Open (or Roland Garros, as the French call it), which ended last Sunday, the famous crocodile logo was everywhere: On players skidding across the signature red playing surface; on umpires announcing “egalité” (or “deuce,” as the rest of the world says); and in the multiple Lacoste boutiques on the grounds of Roland Garros, where €38 t-shirts commemorating the company’s 40 years of sponsoring the tournament competed for buyers’ attention with €50 baseball caps.
But one had to look a bit harder to find the classic polo. The Lacoste shirts that players such as Andy Roddick wear today “bear little or no resemblance to the original,” says Flusser. And on weekends in the Hamptons, Flusser, a skilled tennis player himself, notes that it’s not Lacoste that he sees others wearing, but Polo.
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