Lacoste's beautiful kick-off

Life is a beautiful playing field and, with the launch of its new campaign, “Life is a Beautiful Sport”, Lacoste brings about a new era by reinstating its founding values into the core of its message.
Whether on playing fields or in everyday life, Lacoste is a brand long known for top-quality clothes
 that profess movement, confidence, elegance and optimism in attractive and contemporary styles. Now, with the new campaign unveiled last month, Lacoste is underscoring not only its ever-evolving designs but also the philosophy behind the brand.
“The idea behind this new global campaign is that we want to look into Lacoste’s past and honour what remains despite the changes throughout the years,” Berta de Pablos-Barbier, senior executive vice president for branding and communication, told us at Lacoste headquarters in Tokyo. “The way everyone looks and how they live life is a philosophy. And for Lacoste, the brand created by the French tennis champion Rene Lacoste, life is seen on a very positive and confident view.
“Throughout the years we have become more modern and contemporary, and more fit for everyday wear, rather than just holidays, but we continue to honour our history and legacy in sport.
“Lifestyle trends have changed a lot,” Pablos-Barbier noted. “People are dressing less formally and more casually, especially men – they don’t wear three-piece suits and ties to formal events anymore. Also, modern people are more health-conscious and dynamic, so they prefer something that’s comfortable and easy to wear and not too fancy or surreal. So, with Lacoste’s simple, elegant and very comfortable clothes, our contemporary brand identity is more prominent than ever.”
A brand that’s been around for more than 80 years, Lacoste is enjoying a life well played. Moving on from a simple white polo collection back in the early days, the French firm experimented, evolved and expanded to become a full-fledged fashion house inspired by sport. Each item of clothing is designed to allow men and women to feel emancipated in their minds and bodies, with clothes that enable confidence and ease by being adapted to an ever-changing lifestyle.
“Quality is also key,” Pablos-Barbier stressed. “That’s one of the most important values that keeps us strong. Besides design and concept, we constantly come up with new technologies to keep up with the consumers’ diverse lifestyles. We have the signature pique knitting, the detailed piping and other weaving techniques to produce lighter, more comfortable and yet durable fabric for lasting use. Also, we are making sure that we constantly come up with products that are difficult to copy. We keep the quality very high and the innovation going, and that makes the gap between the counterfeit and the real ones bigger.”
Lacoste was originally a favourite among preppy guys, thanks to its high-quality polo shirts that come in literally every colour under the sun. The understated, contemporary approach allows the brand to expand further and become a new favourite among women who might not be sporty or even play any sports but are almost guaranteed to rock the casual look. Heck, the firm even has a vast collection of accessories, shoes and bags to complete the look.
Lacoste is probably one of a few brands whose main target is difficult to pinpoint because it’s so trans-generational. The very simplicity of Lacoste clothing has always appealed to its regular customers and now attracts the younger generation. And with the new line Lacoste Live! for the funky crowd and the quickly expanding Lacoste Kids for tykes, the brand’s fan base is set to keep on growing. Even the French national sports teams wear Lacoste. This year the brand was the official outfitter for the Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Sochi, Russia. Its role continues through 2016 for every major multiple-sport event, including the Rio Olympics that year.
“We always have sports in mind when shaping a new collection,” said creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista. “We always look back at history, to a certain period of time, and pick a few elements to elaborate on and play with. You might think it’s very limiting when we’re trying to come up with such versatile range of clothes and stay true to the history at the same time, but if the brand has so much history and heritage, there are lots of ideas to play around with.”
Baptista told us that Lacoste fans can this year expect a lot more colours. The spring-summer collection will boast bright pastel hues as well as soothing shades of green red and navy blue. Polo fans, meanwhile, will be treated to a bolder mix of colours and horizontal stripes on the shirts. This year’s winter collection will take its inspiration from golf.
But the brand’s muses don’t limit their resources to tennis and golf. Soon we might see Lacoste clothes celebrating skiing and sailing.
The launch of “Life is a Beautiful Sport” in Tokyo drew celebrities, designers and media people from all over the world. Besides a glimpse of the new collection, there was a screening of the advertising film “The Big Leap”. Directed by Briton Seb Edwards and featuring French cinema star Paul Hamy, the movie illustrates a man’s courage when faced with his own big leap in life, a feeling of dizziness almost overcoming him as he runs headlong into the unknown to win the game of a lifetime.