Bernard Lacoste, who inherited the Lacoste fashion company from his father, French tennis champion René Lacoste, and directed its international expansion into a billion-dollar company recognizable by its signature crocodile logo, died this week in a hospital in Paris. He was 74.
Lacoste was president of the company, which began as a specialized tennis brand, for four decades starting in the 1960s, when he created a licensing program with manufacturers that made clothing with the crocodile logo available worldwide. Le Crocodil (“the crocodile”) had been René Lacoste’s tennis nickname when he was a member of France’s Four Musketeers that dominated the sport internationally in the 1920s (along with Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon). The tennis champion, who died in 1996, said the crocodile nickname came about because of reports in American newspapers about a bet he made with his team captain that he would win a critical match; the stakes were a crocodile-skin suitcase he had seen at a Boston store. A friend then embroidered a crocodile on a blazer that Lacoste wore on the courts. In 1933, he founded his company with a series of white piqué short-sleeve shirts with pop-up collars, similar to the shirts he’d played in.
The alligator shirt became a symbol of preppy fashion, but its mass exposure in time weakened its fashion status. American consumers had difficulty separating the image of the crocodile from the name Izod, the company that made and marketed the shirts in the United States. And there have often been questions whether the logo was a crocodile or an alligator. “We don’t mind what it is called in other countries,” Lacoste once said. “It’s definitely an alligator in America, while it’s a crocodile in France.”
In the 1990s, Bernard Lacoste reined in the use of the logo. In 2000, he introduced a new designer, Christophe Lemaire, and the brand began to regain some of its lost cachet among fashion-conscious consumers. To the label’s sports heritage, Lemaire added music and street styles.
Lacoste arranged for the sponsorship of crocodiles at the Lisbon Zoo, stocked his office in Paris with crocodile sculptures from Rajasthan and China, and at a party at the Central Park Zoo in 2003 cuddled a baby alligator.
By 1995, the company had sold more than 300 million shirts. Nowadays, the crocodile can be found on swimsuits, track pants, caps, belts, gloves, shoes and fragrances.
Bernard Lacoste was born in Paris in 1931. He became president of the company in 1963, remaining active until last year, when he stepped down as chairman and ceo, citing health problems. He was succeeded by a younger brother, Michel Lacoste.