.jpg)
Lacoste
June 2010ZANI - A Cool Label
I was walking in Soho recently and a lad passed. He had on a classic Lacoste three button tennis top. Navy with the buttons done up. Smart yet casual. Terrace yet nightclub. Country yet urban. As an iconic fashion garment for the young working class male it is without compare. Oh sure, there are a few others in there....Adidas trainers, Levi’s jeans, a Harrington jacket maybe, but its still the Daddy...the thing you look at instantly and go...nice top lad. Almost eighty years ago when Jene Rene, a successful French Tennis player in the 1920’s with seven grand slam titles to his name, was looking for something to do as his career came to an end he couldn’t have known that his nickname (The Crocodile..Lacoste) would become one of the most instantly recognisable fashion brands on the planet. He was called ‘Lacoste’ because of a bet he won for a crocodile skin suitcase early in his career. His French team Captain promised him the suitcase from a Boston Department store, if he won a tournament. The young Frenchman played out of his own skin to win every game and the Captain began to call him ‘Lacoste’ as he took the crocodile skin suitcase with him everywhere. Soon the nickname became so universal that he even sewed a ‘croc’ onto the left hand side of his tennis shirt. The Lacoste tennis top was born. Yet, the man who really spotted the potential in a sporting top that could be worn not just on the tennis court, but on the golf range and in everyday life was the French Knitwear Manufacturer Andre Gillier. It has to be said that in the 1930’s France wasn’t particularly different to the UK, US or anywhere else in the Western World. The vast majority of Males had a ‘work’ suit and a ‘good’ suit. Yet Gillier persuaded Jean Rene ‘Lacoste’ to go into business with him and launch the tennis top for sale to the public in 1933. It was no overnight success. Indeed, the Lacoste top sold in only thousands those first decades and mainly to people who had time to sail boats or played a bit of tennis. This was a tiny percentage of the population. In the UK especially, at that time, there was a fierce loyalty to our own Tennis idol’s brand, Fred Perry (Indeed this exists on the Terraces to this very day...The Mancs response to Scouse ‘Europhilia’ of the late 70’s was to go ‘native’ and cling to the much more Mod/Skinhead Fred Perry Polo..Hence the term ‘Perry Boys’ and a huge indication of the different philosophies between the Scouse and Manc attitudes to life at that time...one facing the sea, the other the English Moors). So there was nothing to suggest that Lacoste would ever be anything more than what it had always been. An exclusive top worn by an elite, but by the early 50’s America was starting on her economic miracle...the boom years were about to begin and it was there that Lacoste and Gillier spotted a gap in the market that would change their fortunes forever.
In 1951 they decided to bring a few new colours to their ‘tennis’ top and advertise it in the United States as ‘the status symbol of the competent sportsman’. Hardly catchy in today’s terms but it proved a sensation with the Ivy League set. Suddenly every ‘preppy’ American kid needed one in their wardrobe. We all remember the scene in ‘Goodfella’s’ where Henry’s ‘wife to be’ Karen is taken advantage of by the Tennis Playing Rich kid, after earlier blanking Irish-Italian Henry at the private club. Have a look at the top he wears...this American teenager of privilege...it’s a Lacoste. Scorsese knows that if there’s a top which tells you exactly what your place is in American society at that time..it’s a Lacoste. What does Henry the ‘Bronx kid’ do to this Bankers son? Spreads his nose all over his face with some help from the butt of his gun. It’s a beautiful bit of detail from the wardrobe department. Meanwhile in the UK...nothing. Again it was Fred Perry that the early 60’s Mods chose as their leisurewear of choice. Sure, Lacoste would have been worn by a handful of Tennis enthusiasts but other than that, well, it barely made a dent. It was in France and the US that the ‘Croc’ reined supreme...so where and when did it land here?
It didn’t. There was no massive ‘product launch’ no ‘advertising campaign’ it was that thing of rare and brilliant beauty....a thing from the street. And from a few very specific streets around Scotland Road in Liverpool. 1977 was the year. And two ordinary (now extraordinary with the benefit of time) things happened. Two things that left a lasting legacy on Male British Fashion. One was that Liverpool (then the greatest club side in Europe, arguably on the planet) drew St. Etienne in the European Cup and the other was a rival brand was launched in France called ‘La Tigre’ featuring a ‘Tiger’. Fearing their competition ‘Lacoste’ was shaken from its complacency and launched a range with the boldest colours yet. Oranges, Yellows and Sky Blue’s. Kevin Sampson (author of the brilliant Awaydays) tells us exactly what happend.....’St Etienne was only important in that those who went by Transalpino (student rail card) stopped off via Paris. Others went via coach and passed through Lyon’....To a few thousand ‘light fingered’ Scally’s fresh from Merseyside the pickings from the French ‘non security’ boutiques was like being allowed into Charlie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Needless to say they came home much more ‘colourful’ than when they left and the British Terraces and in turn the British High Streets were never the same again. Indeed, without the cost of a ‘million franc’ advertising campaign Lacoste was about to finally crack the UK market and in the history of fashion never had it been so handy to have seen some of your tops robbed. In fact as someone at Lacoste once famously remarked, it couldn’t have been more advantageous to the company if they’d given a free top to every single Scouser in town that day.
People are often prone to ‘grandiose’ sayings in life. You will hear people sadly say into their beer glass..’Genius is a word used too lightly these days, everyone is bloody described as a genius!’...but the affect of those Liverpudlians on UK fashion ever since is almost impossible to overstate. Hyperbole doesn’t come into it. They literally changed the whole high street of the UK. Cardiff City (the team I support) is like every other football club in the UK (and even Europe now)...it has lads (and some Lasses) obsessed with fashion. It was already there before Casual of course. With the Teddy Boys, the Mods and Skinheads but nothing ‘crossed over’ into the mainstream quite like casual. To this day the average male in the UK will wear a decent pair of trainers (Adidas, Nike, Converse), a well fitted pair of jeans and a designer shirt or trackie top. They just do. And it all goes back to that ‘big bang’ in the summer of 1977 on Merseyside...Sampson, ‘The 1977 European Cup run had a massive effect on Scally Fashions. There was reams of gear in places like Paris and Rome you just couldn’t get in the UK. Zurich, for instance, was where the love affair with Adidas trainers started , there were just so many pairs and we just helped ourselves’.
Today, whether you’re a student, indie kid, football fan or just an average Joe, there is a certain pride in what you wear. That ‘look’ has more to do with ‘casual’ than any other fashion movement. In short, Liverpudlians sneezed Lacoste, Levi’s and Adidas and we’ve all been dabbing our noses with a scouse hanky ever since. Sampson ...’The difference between the May of ’77 and the start of the next season in August was mind blowing. Bowie was huge in Merseyside at that time and he was heavily influenced by the New York disco scene, which was essentiallygay. We didn’t care, practically everyone had a wedge haircut by the end of the summer as what was good enough for David was good enough for us’.
Lacoste landed in South Wales in 79. I can remember my older brother having one as we went away on holidays that summer. I was allowed to ‘look’ at it but not touch. The crocodile was a vivid green against the bold red background. He looked magnificent in it. So many lads in South Wales’s second team was Liverpool or Man U. They were as big then as they are now. Back they’d come to Cardiff, Swansea, Newport and the Valleys bringing stories of wedge haircuts, rare trainers and French gear. Hair was quickly grown, doc’s discarded and bracers cast to one side. This was repeated all over the country, the Midlands, Aberdeen, Portsmouth and right across London. By the time I was old enough to wear one people were onto Lyle and Ralph too, but I didn’t care. I wanted that Crocodile more than anything. The first I had was lemon. Everything about wearing Lacoste was to be bold. The louder the better, it almost screamed..’Look at me! I’m a dresser and I’m not like you!’. You felt different. Most people still shopped at Peacocks, they had no idea of the time and expense that went into getting a top like that. It practically defined who and what you were. It was also dangerous too, as the old Skinheads clung desperately to their eroding kingdom but the danger just made it even more exciting. You ducked and dived through Valley towns where gangs of Punks would pounce at the first sign of your dyed blonde wedge and pink Lacoste. It was only at Ninian Park where you were surrounded by your brethren and felt safe.
I loved that mid to late 80’s look. There was something in all that colour that exploded out of Europe and into the UK. Big, bright and bold, my Mother would often shake her head as my mates would arrive for the match looking like a shoal of fish you’d see in the Great Barrier Reef. Stripes and hoops of purple, green, yellow and pink. We were like a tribe suddenly awash with Technicolor as Thatcher’s grey, money hungry Britain staggered on around us. What you wore defined you. Again the roots of this can be traced back to Liverpool. Thatcher hated that City like she hated South Wales, Football and the Unions and we hated her in turn. And the more anti-Eurpoean she became the more we travelled there. The more she told us it was all about the individual the more we did things communally. Fanzines, music and travel was done in comradeship. As her City boys waved money in garish shirts with red bracers we laughed at them in our attention to detail revelling in her hatred of us, the football fan. By the early 90’s I was into music in a big way and was playing in a band that was starting to get attention. Football fashion had changed..It had become more uniform. That was okay, each to his own. One day on the Bob Bank my mate muttered to me as another Clone Island clad lad walked past us..’It’s all a bit Brummie Doorman for me’. He was right. The colour had gone. It had become, like a lot of the politics, meaner, darker. I didn’t like it. Gone were the days of Pompey turning up in Armani knitwear and us rather than rushing them shouting across the Police ‘Where dew get yewer gear you English bastards, say?’ and them shouting ‘Italy you Welsh cunts, where d’yer think?’. Now it was all Burberry baseball hats and beer bellies, the youth and excitement of it had gone.
But in 2000 something miraculous happened. I went to Manchester. The City had changed. They were now lording it over Europe and the lads there were wearing Lacoste. I couldn’t believe it. I even asked them why and how? It seems (as always) the Scousers were one jump ahead of the pack. They’d dug out the classic and gone retro casual just when the rest of the country had gone retro football top. Sampson.. ‘I bought my first Lacoste from a grafter called ‘Booey’ in the Star and Garter opposite Limey in that summer of ‘77. The pub isn’t there anymore but I still have the top and wear it to the match’. Genius. The Mancunian, two decades on and much more travelled, embraced the look immediately. They looked great. There were gazelle’s out again, Cord Paul Smith Beatle jackets and of course the now ‘legendary’ Lacoste tennis top. Needless to say I dived in and acquired about 10 of the bastards. And here I am now. A decade later sitting in a ‘classic’ Lacoste three button short sleeved. I thought I’d wear it as I type. It’s like a favourite record or book. There to anchor me in life a reference of who and what I am and where I come from. They’re everywhere now. Not just the top but the whole brand. Clothes, bags, aftershave, watches, it’s iconic. But there’s no where on the planet where the working class wore Lacoste like they did in the UK. Not to fuck about on boats or hitting a furry green ball around in, but to dance in, celebrate in, fight in, fall in love in. It was our top of choice. And what a great fuckin choice it was too.......Allez.
Words - Jonathan Owen/ZANI
ZANI on FaceBook
More on ZANI
