La Chemise Lacoste - 1953 - 1983 - 1996

Lacoste made in France - - A Good Thing

'Gentry' Summer of '53 Announces La Chemise Lacoste

This Lacoste From 1996 And There's A Problem

SAYC Polo Circa 1997

It's The Tail - SAYC Polo

Lacoste Tail 1996

Lacoste Tail In Dorm Room 1983 - - Check Out That Tail?

Click on that Gentry article and you can see this was the Lacoste coming outta the box. I read somewhere the marketing strategy was to give the shirt away to the famous and hope the media would take care of the rest. Early product placement. It worked.

In college I preferred Lacoste over Ralph Lauren. Ralph did have some beautiful colors but I was holding onto tradition...even back then. In the 90's, the Lacoste came back after being AWOL for some time. Available at Nieman Marcus for $75. I pounced. Little did I know...It wasn't long before manufacture moved to Peru and so today the Lacoste label reads, "Made in Peru - Designed in France." Bastards.

They snuck the tail by us too. How much do you save by wacking off a four inch tail? That was so much a part of the shirt. Rene Lacoste was said to have had a back hand like the whip of a crocodile. Of course no one paid attention - - including Gentry Magazine - - and for years most folks called it an alligator. An alligator without a tail from Peru. How depressing.

The other shirt is a yacht club polo made by Outer Banks in the US of A. And it has a tail. So there. As I was giving this some serious thought...I came up with a solution. I'm gonna sew a four inch tail on my Lacoste. And in a contrasting color. I offer the idea to you as well. Take a tail-less polo, say bright green, and sew a four inch tail from a pink polo. An orange polo with a green tail. Navy polo with a yellow tail. Maroon and yellow. Green and blue. White and red. Your school or fraternity colors...whatever. Have fun with it and do me a favor...Will you tell me how you did it? I'm not very crafty.

The Lacoste - MW in 1981

MW was a senior my freshman year. President of the SGA, editor of the year book, head of some secret honor society and mayor of Sarasota. On our first date, we sat in a green vinyl booth at the Holiday Inn on the beach, drank $4 cocktails, smoked cigarettes from her silver case and talked about writing and writers. I looked past her and out the glass doors to the ocean and I remember thinking... I was a very long way from Ft Bragg.

The Trad Model in Lacoste

Is she cute or what? I saw a bumper stinker in London which read, "Warning! I brake for Blondes but back up for Red Heads." Exactly.

Anyway, Lacoste opened their show Saturday with enough grey to paint the fleet in Norfolk (as an army brat across the bridge in Hampton we liked to call it Norfuck). A big fan of Lacoste for years, they, like everyone else, started making their stuff in countries you may never have heard of. While the label says, "Designed in France" it sure as hell ain't made there anymore. Too bad. But the line looks great for the Fall. It reminded me of the Talbot's Catalog from the mid 70s. It might help if Talbots looked at their own catalogs.