Felipe Oliveira Baptista made no bones about the point of Lacoste's pre-fall collection. "Market-driven," he called it. But within that starkly commercial context, he still managed to pull off something with enough spark to satisfy the odd creative urge. Lacoste is a pretty defined formula: classic sportswear, classic color palette, classic patterns…and striped all over. Baptista shook it up. He broke the stripe or exploded it into color blocks. He turned argyle abstract. And there was a feel for sporty seventies Americana in a denim shirtdress, in skinny knits, and in old faithfuls like red, white, and blue. Baptista also talked about "morphing"—in the way that a navy cocktail dress was detailed with a sweatshirt's flat-locking, or sweatpants came in wool rather than jersey, or a biker jacket had a double layer of zipping. "Commercial" may have been the end, but "cool" was the means to that end.
