Lacoste Puts Sweat Stains on the Runway at Roland-Garros, and Calls It Sexy
New designer Pelagia Kolotouros built Lacoste's Spring/Summer 2027 collection around "quiet rebellion," right down to clay-stained silhouettes and a sneaker with an actual tennis-ball heel.
Lacoste took its Spring/Summer 2027 show back to Roland-Garros, the clay courts where founder René Lacoste made his name, and handed the collection to designer Pelagia Kolotouros. Her thesis, in her own words: "I think sport is sexy." The collection runs with that idea literally, built around the look of a body mid-effort rather than a body dressed to go nowhere in particular.
Shrunken polos carry sweat-stain motifs, joggers show off popped underwear waistbands, and washed silks are styled to look lived-in rather than pressed. Kolotouros used steam application on layered materials to fake clay stains and sweat marks directly into white silhouettes, and mis-layered collars complete the rumpled effect on purpose. The ACE-T1 sneaker, the collection's standout accessory, is built to resemble a tennis net stretched by impact and finished with a heel shaped like a tennis ball.
It is not just a runway exercise. The collection has already landed placements in more than 40 retailers, including Dover Street Market, Selfridges, and Galeries Lafayette, which suggests Lacoste thinks "sport is sexy" sells just as well off the clay as on it.
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Source: WWD
Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →
