Highlights, 1967

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Source:

The New Yorker - 2/11/67

Good news for sportsmen, 1955

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Source:

The New Yorker - 11/12/55

For Southern Vacationists, 1965

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Source:

The Pittsburgh Press - 12/28/65

And it came to pass...

And it came to pass that a man who sold shirts was smitten by hard times. Neither did any of his merchandise move nor did he prosper. And he prayed and said, "Lord, why hast thou left me to suffer thus? All mine enemies sell their goods except I. And it's the height of the season. My shirts are good shirts. Take a look at this rayon. I've got button-downs, flare collars, nothing sells. Yet I have kept thy commandments. Why can I not earn a living when mine younger brother cleans up in children's ready-to-wear?"

And the Lord heard the man and said, "About thy shirts..."

"Yes, Lord," the man said, falling to his knees.

"Put an alligator over the pocket."

"Pardon me, Lord?"

"Just do what I'm telling you. You won't be sorry."

And the man sewed on to all his shirts a small alligator symbol and lo and behold, suddenly his merchandise moved like gangbusters and there was much rejoicing while amongst his enemies there was wailing and gnashing of teeth...

- Woody Allen, Without Feathers, "The Scrolls", 1975

Wren Shirts Ltd.

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Source:

Spartanburg (SC) Herald-Journal - 10/18/64

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"The history of 'traditionalism' once called 'Ivy League,' dates back before World War II, when students at Eastern universities espoused the fashion cause of comfort and smartness without ostentation. They chose the soft-collared shirt, natural shoulder, muted colors and soft fabrics in all their clothing."

Source:

Nashua (NH) Telegraph - 7/14/62


A few words about Frank J. Reilly, President of Wren Shirts Ltd...

"Mr. Reilly built a successful career in the outerwear business. He began as a salesman for the Manhattan Shirt Company in 1945 and in the course of a 50-plus year career rose to influence the design and marketing of some of the best-known brands in the garment business.

In the early 1970s, Mr. Reilly became US vice president of the Men's Wear Division for Jaeger Fashions. As such, he helped make one of the premier British woolens manufacturers a success in the US market for men's high fashion.

Subsequently, Mr. Reilly became a vice president at Izod Lacoste, which had the US rights to the brand established in Europe by tennis great Jean Rene Lacoste. Nicknamed "Le Crocodile" for his tenacious style of play on the courts, Lacoste founded a company to produce sports shirts and used Le Crocodile (universally referred to as the alligator) for a logo. Mr. Reilly's marketing and design savvy soon helped make the alligator virtually ubiquitous, and extended the line beyond shirts to a general line of sports wear for both men and women.

He often said that the proudest moment of his career was when he became president of Wren Shirts and thus a vice president of the parent company Kayser Roth*. At the time, it made him the youngest vice president of any Fortune 500 company in the US. Remarking on Mr. Reilly's career, a colleague once said, 'He's one of the few people I know who succeeded in business without stepping on people.'"

Source:

Glen Cove (NY) Record-Pilot obituaries - 3/26/04


*Wren shirts were made by F. Jacobson & Sons Inc., another Kayser Roth subsidiary.

Sporty Emblems Sell Shirts, 1980

Sporty Emblems Sell Shirts

New York Times - 6/13/80
by Barbara Ettorre

Who would have thought that the insignia of a penguin, a rooster, a fox or an alligator could transport a simple cotton shirt from the confines of a sports arena onto the chests of middle America?

Yet according to retailers, the simple cotton knit short-sleeved sports shirt - epitomized by the classic Izod Lacoste shirt with the alligator trademark emblem - is outselling just about every other item in men's apparel this year.
...

Market share information is unavailable, but retailers agree that the Izod Lacoste sport shirt, which retails for about $20, is probably Number One, while Munsingwear's $14 Grand Slam shirt with a penguin emblem is a very close Number Two.

The shirts with the emblems seem to have all the prime ingredients for success in a dismal economy; status, practicality, price, fashion, flexibility and the ultimate benediction, enduring trendiness.

The more insignia appearing in the sports shirt marketplace, the better customers seem to like them. There are now at least a dozen emblems adorning shirts made by foreign and domestic companies, double the number of two or three years ago. This figure does not include similar shirts made by sports companies bearing such names as Head, Adidas and Nike. Among the emblems are the wreath by Fred Perry, the polo player by Ralph Lauren, the "T" emblem by Tacchini, and the kangaroo by L'Alpine. The latter two are Italian companies.
...

...At Bloomingdale's, for instance, industry sources estimate that the flagship store and its 13 branches sell at least 50,000 - about $1 million worth - of a single style of the Izod Lacoste shirt. The sources say that Saks Fifth Avenue, Izod's Number One men's wear account (Bloomingdale's is number two), does a comparable business in the single style. Both stores have a multi-million-dollar retail business in Izod men's apparel.

Known in the trade as style 2058 and by consumers as the "alligator shirt," the shirt's basic all-cotton style has not changed much since it first appeared on the tennis court 50 years ago worn by Rene Lacoste, the French player, who founded the Lacoste company, now a $50 million French concern. Izod has a licensing agreement with Lacoste to produce the apparel in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean, and will approach $200 million in sales of men's, women's and children's apparel this year. The shirt alone accounts to 15 to 20 percent of the men's business.

The Izod Lacoste sport shirt and its successors have been given an aura of glamour, vital good health and old-fashioned hero worship. Many professional athletes have contracts with shirt manufacturers that require them to wear the sports shirt and related merchandise at tournaments and appearances.

France: Le Crocodile, 1967

They are known as "alligators" in the U.S. and "crocodiles" in 84 other countries. By any nationality or nomenclature, the French sports shirts, with a familiar-looking reptile embroidered on them, sell exceedingly well. Last year the Paris-based firm of Chemise Lacoste sold 1,700,000 of the shirts, 50% in France and the remainder in the crocodile-alligator world beyond. This month, as Lacoste's factories reopen after a vacation layoff, the order backlog has reached 200,000, and Chemise Lacoste has also gotten an unexpected bonus. Catherine Lacoste, 22-year-old daughter of Founder Rene Lacoste, last month outplayed the pros and, as an amateur, won the U.S. Women's Open golf tournament in Hot Springs, Va. "I don't know if it's because my daughter won or not," says Rene Lacoste with a smile, "but everybody seems to want our shirts now."

Complete article:

Time - 9/1/67

Additional images:

Gentry magazine, Summer 1953

Gentry magazine, Summer 1956

The Well Dressed Playboy, 1955

...men's fashions had been the raison d'etre of Esquire magazine, but it only emerged as a key component in Playboy once the magazine was firmly established. Sporadic features during the first year of publication had seen Playboy cautiously dip its toe into the waters of men's apparel, but by 1955 it was ready to immerse itself more wholeheartedly in the pleasures of shopping for clothes. That year saw Jack Kessie, a graduate of Drake University in Des Moines, appointed as the magazine's first fashion editor (under the pen-name Blake Rutherford). Kessie had already contributed a few freelance pieces to the magazine, but as appointed to the staff because 'he had the kind of casual elegance which Hefner thought exemplified the Playboy style'.

Kessie's first feature - 'The Well Dressed Playboy: Playboy's Position on the Proper Male Attire' (January 1955) - set the tone for the magazine's early fashion coverage. Resolutely didactic, it counselled readers to be 'conservative in all departments' to avoid being 'caught up in a perplexing, phantasmagoria of color combinations, patterns, styles, designs and cuts'. This sense of conservative elegance was informed, above all, by the smart-but-casual traditions of Ivy League style. 'Few will argue', Kessie asserted, 'against the fact that it is to the Ivy Leaguers that we owe the current national acceptance of the trim, tapered look in men's clothing' (Playboy, October 1955), the fashion editor affirming that there was 'an authentic Ivy look in active sportswear, just as there is in town' and decreeing that readers steer clear of 'the kind of gruesome garbage...touted as the hottest news from Majorca, the Italian Riviera, Cap d'Antibes and Southern California: Old Testament sandals, ballet-dancer shirts that tie north of the navel, too-short swim trunks laced and latticed up the side, etc.' (Playboy, July 1957). Instead, Kessie prescribed a style that would allow men to dress 'casually and correctly...and still retain individuality' - for tennis, white shoes and shorts, worn with a red Lacoste knit shirt; for swimming, 'trim, fly-front cotton poplin trunks with side tabs for a waist-clinching fit'; and for golf, 'pleatless, poplin, olive green shorts' teamed with a 'good-looking glen, plaid, long sleeved shirt' and 'the best golf shoes you can afford' (Playboy, July 1957).

Source:

Playboys in Paradise: Masculinity, Youth and Leisure-Style in Modern America, Bill Osgerby, 2001

IZOD presents the Famous Lacoste, 1956

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Source:

Gentry Magazine, Summer 1956, via Gypsy Wear Vintage

The Izod "India madras look":

Crocodile's Shirt

Most top tennis players wear this lisle shirt designed by the game's great Rene ("Le Crocodile") Lacoste to stay tucked, neat, cool, action-free. Imported by David Crystal, $8.

Source:

SI - 9/6/54