Lacoste doesn’t stop at tennis. Felipe Oliveira Baptista tipped his cap to founder René Lacoste’s wife, French golf champion Simone Thion de la Chaume, and the popular Chantaco golf club her father created in 1928 in Saint-Jean-de-Luz. (Photos of the site featured as a print on oversized anoraks.)
The designer was also enchanted by a humane gesture made by the couple. At the dawn of World War II, he recounted backstage, they planted 50,000 trees around the course, enlisting the services of a number of locals, and thereby sparing them from being conscripted to work in Germany.
All of this was viewed from the vantage point of the Eighties and Nineties — his comfort zone.
While wellington boots finished off a lot of the looks, vintage street was the ruling vibe. (Think large stonewashed denim pants with jogger volumes and elasticated cuffs, high-waisted skirts with pleats, roomy men’s leather jackets and jacquard golf knits.)
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Also in the mix were flyaway anorak capes, asymmetric cable-knit tunics over leather pants, plus jewel-tone velvet tracksuits and pastel corduroy jumpsuits that underscored the leisure mood. Highlights from the men’s offer included reversible parkas, shearling jackets with quilting motifs and colored hoodies embroidered with tree specimens.
The checks and argyle motifs, as well as the knits in lichen textures with jacquard motifs depicting autumn leaves, lent a granny flavor, but the main target here was youth. The closing 10 looks featured animal silhouettes, a nod to the brand’s partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature in aid of 10 critically endangered species, to be defined later this year.