When you think of the fashion brand Lacoste, you immediately think of their iconic and easy-to-recognize logo: a green crocodile that is often embroidered on their polo’s, shirts and other clothing items.
However, the company has now decided to release a special and limited edition series that replaces the one thing that makes them instantly recognizable, the crocodile logo.
The crocodile and the brand name have gone hand in hand ever since the company debuted on the market 85 years ago, and it has never waived the iconic green croc since. However, they were more than happy to make an exception in order to raise awareness for animal extinction.
The quintessential crocodile is replaced by ten other animal species who are on the verge of extinction.
Unfortunately, the problem of animal extinction is more severe than ever with hundreds of different species being threatened.
According to the World Animal Foundation, we lose between a thousand and ten thousand animal species every single year.
To put this into perspective: that means that every single day, dozens of species are lost forever.
And the threat applies to all sorts of animals: birds, amphibians, fish, mammals, invertebrates and it even applies to plants as well. Lacoste has now decided to raise awareness with ten new brand logos on their classic and traditional white polo’s.
The clothing items can be found under the ‘Save Our Species’ limited edition collection by the brand, and it’s just the first of many because the brand has made a three-year partnership deal with the IUCN, the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
“For the endangered species of this world, the crocodile abandons its ancestral place,” the company stated.
Fun fact: the crocodile was actually a nickname that was given to the founder of the clothing company, René Lacoste. Apparently, he behaved like one when he was playing tennis. As a sort of homage, the crocodile has been present on every piece of Lacoste clothing – until now, of course.
The special polos are ‘limited edition’ – just like the endangered animals.
Not everybody will be happy to hear that Lacoste hasn’t made a lot of these polos, as only 1,775 polos have been made in total. You could say that the brand wanted to artificially create a scarce in order to drive up the demand, and that’s exactly what they wanted to do. Not to create more profits, but to raise more awareness and to make a statement.
There aren’t many pieces of each polo, just like there aren’t many animals left for a certain species.
“The number of polos produced for each series corresponds to the remaining population sizes in the wild.”
For example, the company has only made 450 polos with the Anegada ground iguana as the logo. The species – which only counts around 450 animals as well – have been threatened for years due to cattle breeding and shrinking of their habitat.
The rarest polo in the ‘Save Our Species’ collection is the Vaquita, which is also known as the Gulf or the California porpoise. Unfortunately, scientists estimate that there only a couple of dozen of these majestic sea mammals left, because the species tend to get entangled into shrimp gill nets. Only thirty of these polos were made.
Other animals include the Burmese Roofed Turtle, the Northern Sportive Lemur, the Indonesian Javan Rhino, the Cao-Vit Gibbon, the Kakapo, the California Condor, the Saola and The Sumatran Tiger.
Each of these species is critically threatened and are likely to disappear in the coming years if no action is taken.
Every polo had a retail price tag of 185 US dollars and they all sold out very quickly. The total collection counted 1,775 pieces, meaning that there was revenue of almost 330,000 dollars. Half of the profits go to the IUCN, while the other half will be used to raise further awareness and visibility.
And since the sports fashion brand struck a three-year deal with the animal organization, it’s likely that we’ll see more collaborations in the not-so-distant future. Yes – the iconic and trusty logo is being replaced, but for a good cause such as this one, the embroidered crocodile probably wouldn’t mind.
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