History of the logo : Lacoste
The Lacoste brand was founded in 1933 by André Gillier and a famous French tennis player named René Lacoste.
The high-end clothing company Lacoste originally made only tennis clothing (shirts). Today the offer of Lacoste (and the demand) has evolved, the company with the crocodile logo offers shoes, perfume, watches and even glasses!
The clothes are now not necessarily dedicated to tennis, but are more open to the public, including tracksuits, sweatshirts, t-shirts, etc..
We will focus on the Lacoste logo which has been successful and is still successful today!
Why Lacoste chose a crocodile as a logo!
In 1925, the tennis player Rene Lacoste, was in Boston looking at the store windows of the city. He noticed a suitcase made of alligator skin that he liked, but could not afford to buy it.
So he made a bet with the captain of the French Davis Cup team, the bet was: if I win the next match (tennis) you give me this suitcase.
Unfortunately, René did not win the match, but his good play and aggressive style towards his opponent earned him the nickname “Crocodile”.
The American public was quick to nickname him:
In 1926, a friend of Rene Lacoste named Robert George, made the first Lacoste logo, this logo was embroidered on the blazer of Rene Lacoste.
A few years later in 1933, Lacoste created the company “La Chemise Lacoste” with collaborator André Gillier who was the boss of a knitting company based in France.
The company manufactured the tennis shirt with the Lacoste emblem and René Lacoste wore this shirt during the matches which helped to promote the Lacoste brand and make Lacoste one of the most famous emblems of our time.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE LACOSTE LOGO
The logo has evolved over the years, at first the crocodile did not look like the one we imagine!
It was a crocodile with an open mouth and too much detail, Rene Lacoste has decided by a simpler logo, a green crocodile with the scales of the back and white eyes with a red mouth
Modernization of Lacoste
In 2011 the brand calls the agency Seenk for a modernization of the logo.
The logo does not change that much and will be just in continuity with the writing “lacoste” and a change of font to be more modern.
This change allows the brand according to Seenk to leave aside “a little” the sportswear side of the brand Lacoste to be more open and interest women.
Lacoste makes more and more collaborations with rappers to interest young people and open up in the streetwear style.
10 quotes about Lacoste
1) René Lacoste won 10 tennis tournaments in the 1920s and 1930s.
2) René invented the polo shirt known as Lacoste, because he wanted something comfortable to wear for his competitions (at that time there were long sleeves).
3) Lacoste invented the polo shirt, but also created a tennis ball machine and a steel tennis racket, so he filed 20 patents between 1960 and 1980 after stopping the sport in 1932. That’s why Lacoste calls himself an “inventor”, his famous sentence: Inventor should be the job on my business cards.
4) René Lacoste died in 1996, he analyzed his opponents, notably by taking a lot of notes! He sent pages of notes to his granddaughter Beryl Lacoste Hamilton during the Miami Open.
5) René had a wife named Simone Thion de la Chaume, she and her daughter were golf champions! His wife even won a British women’s amateur golf championship in 1927, and Catherine won a U.S. Women’s Open in 1967 at only 22 years old!
6) René Lacoste’s daughter (Catherine) and René were presidents of the golf club “Golf de Chantaco”, a golf club created in 192 a golf club created in 192 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz in France. Nowadays it is one of the most prestigious courses in the country.
7) The famous Lacoste L.12.12 polo shirt was available in only one color (white) until 1950! The polo had a special name (L.12.12), because it would have taken 12 prototypes to reach the final version.
8) The new orientation towards streetwear pushed Lacoste to launch collaborations with other fashion houses like Concepts or mastermind JAPAN and also to make collaborations with rappers.
9) Lacoste had a bad buzz in 2020, because Lacoste had been accused of “participating” in forced labor of Uyghurs in fact Lacoste worked with some suppliers using Uyghurs. Lacoste has therefore committed to no longer use suppliers using this kind of practice.
10) The stadium of Roland Garros had been built for Rene Lacoste and his teammates (Jacques Brugnon, Henri Cochet and Jean Borotra), they were named “Four Musketeers”.
*** Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) ***