Many people’s abiding memory of this Lacoste show will be the weather event that hit immediately after the models had left the tennis court. There was barely a second between the flash of lightning and crash of thunder that signaled a deluge so dense that guests screamed out loud at the ferocity of it. There would be some very damp editors at Louis Vuitton later.
One way to spin it, however, is that Louise Trotter caught a lucky break. Had the show run five minutes later, her grand gesture would have been a washout. In this collection, perhaps only a long tan gabardine trench with a Lacoste green croc on its chest would have been able to protect its wearer, at least a bit, from the downpour, had it hit during a finale that saw the models walk out on the clay of the Court Simonne-Mathieu in Paris’s Roland-Garros tennis complex.
Lacoste is more than a tennis brand, yet its origin lies in tennis, so it was right to bring us way out west to this venue. It was also right that Trotter both simplified her game plan and upped her focus this season by presenting a collection of clothes which, beyond the crocs stitched onto that trench or onto the sleeve of a yellow suit worn by Maggie Maurer or printed on the house-green silk pants worn by Leon Dame, conveyed both Lacoste and luxury quite convincingly.
The oversized waffled short-sleeve shirts in graphic color mixes were refinements of the famous preppy pique shirt this brand sells by the bucketload, and while luxurified, they retained the ease of the original. Trotter is a big leather lover, a passion she indulged here via slouchy rib-hemmed pants and a leather neckerchief styling story that looked okay enough. The leather-collared and -pocketed full-length polo shirtdress worked nicely, and there was a pleasant and not overplayed silhouette story in the ribbed waist shape that connected a green poplin dress and a white pleated skirt.
As the clouds prepared to do their worst, Trotter’s models walked onto the clay court in her considered mix of tennis-touched sportswear and formal. Neither Maurer nor Dame—joint winners of best walks in Paris this season at Thom Browne and Margiela respectively—needed to repeat those theatrics in a collection that has pared and calmed itself down this season and is much the stronger for it.
