Lacoste L.12.12 Polo

The L.12.12 is a short-sleeved shirt knitted in petit piqué, a cotton with a fine, open texture that lets the skin breathe. It has a ribbed collar that lies flat or turns up, a short placket of two buttons, ribbed bands at the cuffs and short splits at the sides. On the left breast is the crocodile, embroidered in green.

René Lacoste designed it to play in. Tennis players of the 1920s wore long-sleeved button-up shirts with the sleeves rolled up, and Lacoste, one of the Four Musketeers who won the Davis Cup for France and a seven-time Grand Slam champion, wanted something that breathed and let him move. He had short-sleeved shirts made in knitted piqué and wore them on court; the American press, which called him the Crocodile, saw them, and from 1927 a crocodile drawn by his friend Robert George was stitched on to his blazer.

In 1933, his playing career over, Lacoste went into business with André Gillier, whose knitwear works in Troyes was among the largest in France. Together they made the shirt for sale, with the crocodile on the chest, and registered the emblem that year. The company calls it the first logo worn on the outside of a garment. Its model name records its making: L for Lacoste, 1 for the petit piqué, 2 for the short sleeves and 12 because it was the twelfth prototype.

The shirt was white until 1951, when the first colours were added. In the United States it was made for decades under licence as Izod Lacoste, until the French company took back its rights in 1993. The Swiss group Maus Frères has owned the company since 2012. The L.12.12 is still listed under the same number, in a classic fit and a slimmer one, in dozens of colours, and the plain white is the shirt it began as.