Why fashion beats sport if you want to win immortality.

BY Luke Leitch | 06 July 2012

Until chronic bronchitis forced his premature retirement from tennis in 1929, Ren Lacoste won three French Opens, two Wimbledon Championships and two US Opens in just four years as a professional. It was a feat that earned him membership of the Four Musketeers, France's greatest-ever group of players.

Yet say "Lacoste" today, and what do most people think of? Not the ballistic precision of Ren's baseline play, but the clothing company he founded, and its famous crocodile-logo polo shirt (12 million sold in 2011 alone, with a total company turnover of 1.6billion euros). The story of Ren Lacoste is a smashing example of why, should you hanker after immortality, it's better to triumph in the fashion business than strive for sporting greatness. After all, can you name the other "musketeers"?*

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To aid his training, Lacoste, born in 1904, invented a ball-lobbing machine so that he could practise without a partner. That ingenuity continued when, by now a champion, he ran up some shirts that resembled the impractically formal, starched numbers that were the tennis uniform of the time - but made of a light, piqu cotton to allow freedom of movement and maximum coolness. "The Crocodile" became Lacoste's nickname after his wager over a crocodile-skin bag with France's Davis Cup coach was reported by the Boston Globe in 1923. He played up to the nickname when, while still a player, he began to wear an embroidered crocodile patch on the left breast pocket of his tennis blazer.

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These factors all combined after that early retirement, when he launched a company producing those lightweight "L.12.12" shirts, complete with a scaled-down crocodile on their chests. This means Lacoste has the highly dubious - considering the blight it has spawned - honour of being the first ever company to display its logo on the exterior of its clothes.

After their introduction to the US in the Fifties, the shirts became available in various colours and popular among golfers. They were (and still are) rather expensive compared to other polo shirts, but by the late Seventies they - along with chinos, no socks and loafers - became the chosen uniform of America's "preppies", WASPy, privately-schooled college students. This in turn sparked a backlash marked by the 1981 publication of a book called Save an Alligator, Shoot a Preppie (Americans tend to confuse their Lacoste reptiles).

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Mencyclopaedia: Lacoste