René Lacoste was a famous French tennis player who won the 1927 U.S. Open championship, and he wore clothes that he created himself. A white, short-sleeve shirt made exclusively of a light knitted fabric called ‘jersey petit piqué’ that served to wick away moisture due to heat, was the very first version of performance clothing in sports.
In 1933 he retired from tennis and formed La Chemise Lacoste with André Gillier, the owner of the largest French knitwear manufacturing firm at the time. They began to produce the revolutionary tennis shirt Lacoste had designed with a crocodile logo embroidered on the chest. The American press had nicknamed Lacoste “the Alligator” because of a bet made about an alligator-skin suitcase.
In 1952 with the label expanding the shirts were exported to the United States and advertised as “the status symbol of the competent sportsman”.
Lacoste’s popularity continued to grow and a French designer Christophe Lemaire was hired to create a more modern, upscale look. In 2005, nearly fifty million Lacoste products were sold in over one hundred countries.
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