Lacoste: Before There Was Golf Fashion, There Was This

Lacoste — the French sporting house that produced the polo shirt in 1933 for René Lacoste to wear on a tennis court in the south of France, and thereby accidentally created the foundational garment of golf fashion — closes this series as the origin point it has always been.

This is not a nostalgic entry. Lacoste is in the review because it belongs here, because the contemporary golf collection is more considered than its heritage positioning sometimes suggests, and because any honest account of the visual language of women’s golf that does not acknowledge the crocodile is incomplete.

The polo shirt that Lacoste produces is, still, the reference against which every other polo shirt in golf is measured. The piqué construction, the placket, the short sleeve length, the colour range that runs from the classic to the unexpected — these are not design decisions that have been revisited since 1933. They are design decisions that were correct in 1933 and have remained correct because they were correct.

Image courtesy of Lacoste. All rights reserved.

The women’s golf line has evolved significantly from the heritage anchor into something that engages with contemporary golf fashion without abandoning what made the brand important in the first place. Technical fabrics with the performance credentials the modern game requires. Silhouettes that have been adjusted for contemporary women’s proportions. A colour range that has always been one of Lacoste’s genuine strengths — the ability to produce a colour that reads as classic rather than dated, that looks right on the first tee and in the clubhouse and in the photograph and everywhere else.

For the woman building a golf wardrobe with the editorial intelligence this series has been advocating, Lacoste is the contrast reference: the piece against which the Korean and Japanese brands are positioned, the garment that makes the Fair Liar dress or the WAAC polo or the Pearly Gates skirt look like what they are — the new world in conversation with the origin. That conversation is more interesting with Lacoste in the wardrobe than without it.

The full women’s golf collection is available at lacoste.com and through major department stores globally.