Somewhere around 1963, these polo shirts began to make their mark. The frat guys and preppies were all wearing them – knit shirts with little alligators embroidered on the chest. The coolest guys wore them with collars up, no socks, chino pants and a pair of Bass Weejuns, of course. It was the ultimate preppie uniform.
I had to have one of these alligator shirts. Julian’s Men’s Shop at UNC had them – at eight bucks apiece. You could but three ordinary shirts for that, but I pinched a few pennies and bought one. It was Carolina blue, and I wore it for maybe 20 years. The Chemise Lacoste Alligator shirt craze swept the nation, and it all began with a French tennis player, René Lacoste.
Lacoste was a superstar tennis player with seven Grand Slams to his credit. He was Number One in the world in 1926 and 27. But Monsieur Lacoste did not like how tennis players dressed in the late 20’s. They wore long sleeve button down shirts, long pants and even ties – and they played tennis for 4 hours on clay courts in 90-degree weather.
Lacoste came up with a polo shirt for tennis, and since the American press had dubbed him “The Alligator” after he once wagered for an alligator-skin suitcase with the captain of the French Davis Cup team, the Frenchman then adopted the alligator logo as his own. The shirt designed by René himself was made of a piqué knit cotton, with short sleeves, an unstarched collar, a placket opening with buttons at the neck, and a “tennis tail” to help keep the shirt tucked in.
Because of licensing rights, Lacoste had to hook up with Izod to bring them to the United States. The shirt hit the American market with little fanfare at first. Then, celebrities such as Bing Crosby and JFK began wearing them and soon everybody had to have one.
I expect I owned 8 or 10 Lacoste shirts and wore them till they were threadbare. In the late 80s, Izod switched fabrics and the shirt was never the same, and demand faded. But for 20 years the Chemise Lacoste shirt from Izod was certainly a staple in the drawer of every American preppie.
