An Interview with Peter Saville on Lacoste’s Holiday Collector series

British art director, Peter Saville, began by working in music. As co-founder of Factory Records he created a series of iconic record sleeves for Joy Division and New Order between 1979 and 1993. During this period he also created artwork for Roxy Music, George Michael, Peter Gabriel and Pulp amongst others. He has also worked in fashion with Yohji Yamamoto, Christian Dior, Stella McCartney,
Alexander McQueen to mention a few. He was appointed Creative Director of the City of Manchester in 2004, and in 2010 he shook up England when he redesigned the national team’s football kit.
With his humor, intelligence and creativity, Saville succeeded in his mission to twist the cult classic polo and turn it into a contemporary collectable. Rather than changing the polo shirt’s shape or color, he decided to playfully experiment with the crocodile. Saville kept the garment’s classic white and the original green of its logo, but pushed the crocodile to its limits by turning it into a doodle, blur, or simple line.
In an exclusive interview with PASHION, Saville discloses the process about his collaboration with Lacoste:
-Mr Saville could you give our readers a quick introduction of who Peter Saville is?
Oh that is not so easy, let’s see …one of the journalist I met yesterday actually knew a lot about me and my work; he told me ‘Peter you are not a designer you are a cultural influence.’ This is one way to answer this question. It seems that for 35 years I have been a cultural influence. That has happened because principally I have worked in the medium of mass communications and i have had a lot of unique circumstances that gave me a lot of freedom of expression within the context of mass communication, and normally this does not happen. I am not necessarily more special than anyone else but the circumstances were that I was able to use the medium of communication design to express my own opinions which is rare. In communication design you deliver other peoples’ opinions! It just turned out that I was able to use the medium for my own opinions and these opinions somehow had some resonance with the audience (…) I realised I have an opinion about the world around me and sometimes I can share that opinion in the main stream. In the last 10 years, I have not been motivated to work with ‘consumer’ companies for marketing products, I haven’t had a feeling for that since the mid-90s.
-How and when did this ‘mingling’ with the fashion world started?My early work has a very close relationship with fashion. in the 80s I felt that fashion to some extent was empowering to the individual. My own relationship with fashion was empowering, the ability to create the ‘self’. I worked with Yohji Yamamoto in the 80s doing the famous catalogues with Marc Ascoli and Nick Knight who recommended me to Marc, Yohji’s art director. There had not been an active relationship between the graphic companies and fashion. Nick suggested that a graphic designer could add another dimension to the production. That was, in a way, the beginning of a proactive role for graphic design, typography and production in the context of fashion. In the mid 90s this became an obsession in fashion; some fashion houses even hired the graphic designer before the photographer!
-As a graphic designer, were you commissioned to re-interpret and deconstruct the logo of Lacoste? Was this how the company approached you?
No, that is what I did eventually. I had an introductory project last year where I was asked to design an ’80′ for the 80th anniversary of Lacoste. Then they introduced me to the idea of the collector shirt and they asked whether I wanted to do the 2013 collector shirt. So they gave me a ‘carte blanche’ to do whatever I wanted and the only requirement was to include the Lacoste logo. obviously the project is about brand, brand culture is something that we all have an opinion about. There is a global obsession with brands. People talk about brands in every day conversations and within the institutions there is an obsession with their brand, identity and, the guidelines of their brand identity and this almost religious cult that the graphic designers created about the brand identity. So I thought through this collaboration with Lacoste, I could ask some questions about this and to break this cage of the logo, to use this opportunity to address this contemporary issue of brand culture. I presented the idea to the heads of Lacoste which startled them completely but they gradually came to humour the idea of playing with the logo. And everyone eventually thought it is an opportunity to ‘breathe’ again in representing the brand. So they supported the project of re-visiting the logo! I created 80 versions of re-interpreted logos on 80 unique shirts to celebrate the 80th anniversary. There is only one of the 80 models for sale. It is not about selling but rather making a commentary on this consumer obsession. It is more of a gallery idea and the format of representing the polos has been that of an art exhibition that will tour.
-In your opinion how does this interpretation / deconstruction relate to the brand’s origins and history?
I had a nice discussion with Sophie Lacoste, René’s grand daughter, where we thought: did René Lacoste, the tennis player, 80 years ago expect his nickname motif to become this heavy cult…? And we both thought that it was not the case at all. So in this way this project is loyal to the context to which the house of Lacoste was born!
- In your 80 editions did you use the Logo as an emblem of the brand or the logo as a value added to the label? Where does the logo fall for you within the Lacoste context?
I think that it is the question that the limited edition polos ask. The nice thing about this is throwing these questions at the audience/consumers and not giving them a straight answer. I put lines, dots, scribbles that somehow look like Lacoste but are not the ‘croc’ so in a way it becomes about what we think we are seeing. But these iconic brand marks add the value to the generic products; so are the re-interpreted logos undermining it or celebrating it? This is what this project is questioning. And for me Lacoste is a very egalitarian brand, actually you see the rich people going to their yacht clubs in a Lacoste shirt but you also see kids in Brazil playing football in Lacoste! It is a universal brand that is accessible to everyone, just like Coca-Cola! Is it up-market? is it down-market? it is kind of all of them to different people…and that has allowed me to play with such a universal recognisable icon. It is also Lacoste having fun with itself and is prepared to make fun of itself!
**The Limited Edition: a truly limited edition as it is comprised of only 80 polos for women and 80 polos for men, all sporting a different and completely unique logo. Each piece has a certificate of authenticity signed and numbered by Peter Saville. It goes without saying that there won’t be enough for everybody!