“It’s been a really long time since we met in March,” says Louise Trotter over a conference call. That might qualify as the understatement of the year—at least in fashion. Trotter notes that her fall 2020 Lacoste show, held in the Tennis Club de Paris, was the second-to-last runway show of the Before times. Soon after she and her teams were cloistered in their homes amidst Paris’s confinement. Rather than fret over what to make, they swiftly announced they would sit out the season proper and release a small collection on their own schedule.
The resulting 20 looks were made half in confinement and half out of it, with the team meeting in-person after restrictions eased up. “It’s representative of the time we lived through and what we wanted to say,” says Trotter. The message is one of coming together, using what they’ve got to make what they want. Most of the clothing has an athleisure aspect—a nod to the brand’s heritage on the tennis court and off it, the designer explains—and made from a combination of existing fabrics, vintage and archive pieces, and embroideries by the couture house Maison Lemarié. Vintage track jackets became trousers or were spliced together into chic trenches, the sort of hybridization that streetwear acolytes will be familiar with.
The garments are photographed on a street cast group of Parisians in the 10ième. “What I most enjoyed is the community and the way we all came together to bring this together,” Trotter concludes. In this, the collection is a true embodiment of our time: casual, collaborative, and constructed using extant materials. Let’s hope this ideology continues into future projects at Lacoste and throughout the industry.
