Portrait signé en pied, signé

René Lacoste, one of the “Four Musketeers” of French tennis alongside Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon, won the Davis Cup for France in 1927 and 1928. Individually, he won the French Championships three times (1925, 1927, 1929), Wimbledon twice (1925, 1928) and the US Open twice (1926, 1927). He was ranked world no. 1 in 1926 and 1927.

Lacoste is of course also known as an industrialist, and particularly for the textile brand bearing his name, whose logo is a crocodile. His nickname, “the Crocodile,” or “the Alligator,” was given to him by the American press, following a wager he reportedly made in 1923 with Allan Muhr, then captain of the Davis Cup team, in Boston. Lacoste had apparently fallen for a magnificent alligator-skin trunk in a shop window. Allan Muhr, noticing his interest, proposed a bet: if Lacoste won a decisive match, the trunk would be his. Lacoste lost the match, but the story of the wager reached a journalist, who decided to nickname him “the Alligator” — a name that also evoked his tenacity as a player who “never let go of his prey.”

Inspired by this nickname, Robert George designed a crocodile, which was embroidered in 46 colors on the chest of the white blazer Lacoste wore before matches.

This photograph, taken at Wimbledon in 1927, is one of the most famous images of the player wearing this celebrated blazer. Six years later, having retired from competition, Lacoste launched the Lacoste brand with André Gillier, the leading figure of the French hosiery industry: a line of polo shirts intended primarily for tennis players and golfers. Accustomed to wearing formal long-sleeved shirts, tennis players were soon won over by the sporty yet elegant character of these new garments.

This personal emblem quickly became the symbol of the brand. The logo varied in size and color before Lacoste settled on a small green crocodile with white scales and an open red mouth. It remained unchanged until 2011, when the logo underwent a slight redesign.