The story of René Lacoste (Paris, 1904 – Saint Jean de Luz, 1996) was not that of a Parisian haute couture designer, but that of an athlete who won seven Grand Slam tournaments in the singles category and was part of ‘ the Musketeers’, the best-known generation of French tennis players of the 1920s.
Lascoste was born in Paris into a wealthy family. At the age of 15, after a trip with his father to England, he played tennis for the first time. The young man did not present any natural talent -unlike other opponents such as Borotra or Cochet-, but he did have a conscientious strength and discipline to train with high concentration.
Also unlike the other musketeers, who were self-taught, Lacoste had a renowned personal trainer from the start. This, in addition to perfecting his game, taught him to practice strength and physical capacity; something that was not common at the time. And already at that time, the Parisian demonstrated his ability to create, because, given the impossibility of being able to train all the hours he wanted with his coach, he invented a tennis machine that shot balls to be able to practice in lonely.
After innumerable championships and many years of observing and perfecting his game, Lascoste manages to become the best French tennis player in 1925, and becomes, along with Jean Borotra, Henri Cochet and Jacques Brugnon, one of the four famous Musketeers of French tennis. consecrated by the Davis Cup.
In 1933, when Lacoste had already abandoned tennis professionally, he entered the business world at the hands of the clothing company that bears his surname. The iconic crocodile logo appeared as the result of a bet, when Allan H. Muhr, captain of the French Davis Cup team at the time, promised to give Lacoste an alligator-skin suitcase if he won one of his tennis matches. . Thus, after finishing the winner, an American journalist echoed this story and baptized Lacoste as ‘The Alligator’ (the crocodile), and thus the idea of embroidering this logo on each of his signature garments arose.
The clothes of the crocodile brand managed to quickly position themselves in the textile market due to the comfort and innovative style that their garments proposed. And it is that, defying the conventions, Lacoste shortened the sleeves of the typical tennis shirt to create a comfortable polo shirt, since he understood that it had to be the clothes that adapted to the players and not the other way around. In this way, the businessman proposed a modern, light and off-road wardrobe that he swept the world by storm, thus laying the foundational foundations of a brand that, to this day, continues to defend the idea.
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