René Lacoste: From Sporting Innovation to a Clothing Brand

René Lacoste was a tennis champion before he was a manufacturer, and the company that bears his name grew out of problems he encountered on the court. Born in Paris on 2 July 1904, he became one of the "Four Musketeers", the French players who dominated the game in the late 1920s. In 1933, four years after his last major championship, he founded a clothing company with the knitwear manufacturer André Gillier. Its first product was a tennis shirt.

A champion of the 1920s

Lacoste's playing career was short and exceptionally successful. According to the International Tennis Hall of Fame, he won seven Grand Slam singles titles: the French Championships in 1925, 1927 and 1929, Wimbledon in 1925 and 1928, and the United States Championships in 1926 and 1927. With Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and Jacques Brugnon, he helped France win the Davis Cup in 1927 and again in 1928, both times against the United States. He was known for studying his opponents closely and for a patient, analytical style of play.

The crocodile

The emblem came before the company. In 1923, during a tour in the United States, Lacoste made a bet with his team captain over a crocodile-skin suitcase, in Boston. He lost the bet, but the American press, reporting the story, began to call him "the crocodile". According to Lacoste's own history, in 1927 his friend Robert George drew a crocodile, which Lacoste had embroidered on the white blazer he wore before matches.

The nickname and the badge were at first a personal matter, part of a sporting reputation. Their later use on clothing turned a player's identity into a commercial mark.

Rethinking tennis dress

Tennis dress of the period called for long sleeves. Lacoste preferred something lighter. The company records that in 1928 he played the final of the French championship in short sleeves, which was not then regulation dress.

The shirt that resulted was made in petit piqué, a knitted cotton with a textured surface which, according to the company, helped players to sweat less. Short sleeves improved freedom of movement. Lacoste's history describes it as "a single invention and three patents", a reminder that its creator approached clothing in the same way as his other inventions, from a machine for throwing tennis balls, registered in 1927, to a steel racket patented in 1963.

The company of 1933

In 1933 René Lacoste and André Gillier founded the company that would manufacture the shirt. The partnership joined a sportsman's practical knowledge to industrial expertise in knitwear: Gillier helped develop the knit used for the shirt. The garment carried an embroidered crocodile on the chest. Lacoste describes this as the first logo on a garment. Such claims are difficult to verify in absolute terms, but the visible emblem was at least an early example. Robert George, who had drawn the original crocodile, took over the company's artistic direction the same year.

The business developed gradually. The first coloured polo shirts appeared in 1951, exports grew during the 1950s, and the brand entered the American market in that decade. René Lacoste died on 12 October 1996 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

From court to wardrobe

The Lacoste shirt is a clear case of a garment designed for a specific activity becoming part of everyday dress. Its success depended on solving a real problem consistently, and its cultural life grew as people adopted it far from the tennis court.