Lacoste Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear

“One day I noticed my friend the Marquis of Cholmondeley wearing his polo shirt on the court. ‘A practical idea,’ I thought to myself.” That is how René Lacoste recounted the fateful mid-1920s moment that led to him upending contemporary tennis wear and, once retired, founding the company originally named La Chemise Lacoste.

Thus Lacoste was born on the court: today the brand returned to it for the second time since Pelagia Kolotouros came into play as creative design director in 2023. We were at the Philippe-Chatrier court at Roland-Garros again, but this time on court rather than up in the bleachers. Here Kolotouros had set up the space as a salon cast in clay whose walls and tables were lined with a high visibility audience that ran from Adrien Brody to Wang Yibo via Venus Williams.

Under Kolotouros, Lacoste has declared its intention “to become the most inspiring French brand in fashion sports.” This is a pretty vague brief that allows the designer plenty of room to maneuver. Today she luxuriated in that space to present a Lacoste wardrobe that spanned the 1920s to now, traveling across multiple market segments in the process. And as with Lacoste itself, this collection began on the court.

Kolotouros’s Lenglen pleated tennis skirt handbags returned in so many new variations that the models often carried two at once: fresh fabrications included a fearsome edition in cast metal. The designer expanded the tennis accessory conceit by introducing a new bag wreathed in embellished tennis netting. There were also tennis kit bags and racket bags sometimes decorated with glittering embossments of René’s crocodile logo.

The garments opened with some formalized and technically expressed iterations of old-school tennis wear in unquilted down. There was a nice clay-khaki phase including a luxury-industrial boiler suit, a tracksuit, and a rangey trench. Mohair fringe was a decadent spin on cable knit pieces that again recalled 1920s tennis attire. Slightly bemusing details included the shoelace belts and transformable mitten gloves.

The double-breasted liberally buttoned jackets looked like an adaptation of tennis blazers, extended in the hem and transformed into cabans. A knit long sleeve Lacoste croc tennis shirt was worn over a sheer lace edged skirt as a gentle Jazz Age throwback. A full-length v-neck tennis sweater dress was served up dark green in what looked like chenille.

Further embellishments included embroidered patches whose designs were adapted from René’s career haul of prize medals, including for the Davis Cup. Another prominently displayed decorative trophy was a family crest style branding whose heraldic elan, perhaps unwittingly, reflected the Marquis of Cholmondeley’s noble role in Lacoste’s conception. This latest chapter of Kolotouros’s imaginative fashion biography of Lacoste’s founder played out finely.