Assouline Releases Lacoste: The Element of Style

It wasn’t so long ago that the appearance of this open-mouthed crocodile was an entrance ticket into the stylish cliques of my middle school. If one sported the little gator (we called them “Izods” back in the day), it was generally assumed by the rest of the population that you had access to serious fashion, including Jordaches and Polo shirts. If one had the collar turned up (and these days they call that a “popped” collar, although I don’t remember using that term in the mid-80s, but I could be wrong), one was really riding the crest of fashion, almost enough to be quite New Wave.

We didn’t know that it was a luxury tennis brand. We just knew that it was desirable and stylish, and girls really needed one in pink. In fact, if you could layer that pink one with, say, a white one underneath, we were pretty certain that it was the best offering to the fashion gods one could imagine.

We also liked parachute pants, but that is for another time.

Now, however, I’m older and so much wiser – no parachute pants for me – and I can appreciate the backstory of the Lacoste brand. How Rene Lacoste was THE tennis star in the twenties, who always had that certain something that set him apart. I can also appreciate how the brand was among the first to bring luxury to the masses.

This book illuminates the contemporary relevance of the legacy of René Lacoste, who, in his glory days at the end of the Roaring Twenties, was the best tennis player in the world. A conqueror, an innovator, a designer, he always displayed a certain flair. And those qualities endure. A story about fluidity, softness, comfort, the sun and the sea, endurance. A story about what Christophe Lemaire calls a “democratic luxuriousness,” perhaps a luxuriousness of detail. A story about a sensation, a light, a color, a texture, a pattern, the freedom of a body in motion and at rest. A story about the Club collection, the Sport collection, the women’s collections; about windowpane check, contrast piping, stretch knit polo shirts: “a world of design with a human dimension.”

This book is the story (or one story) of a culture that gives voice to many personal stories—the story of a transgenerational and transcultural cult brand; of a laughing crocodile beloved by children; of a breath, an emotion, a moment to be savored; of well-being; of vitality. The story of everything we’ve done and of everything we have yet to do, all thanks to a single pensée, a single thought, that inspires expression in every form.

And really, I can’t explain it any better than that.

Lacoste: The Element of Style is now available for pre-order from Amazon.com, and will be available at all the exclusive Assouline locations, including the Paris boutique and the boutique in the Plaza Hotel in New York City.
 

© 2010, Retrodivas Fashion: personal style, fashion news, and DIY. All rights reserved. Retrodiva’s Closet by Meredith Edwards-Cornwall is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at www.retrodivascloset.com.