Heroes of Menswear: Lacoste’s Felipe Oliveira Baptista

Lacoste’s creative director Felipe Oliveira Baptista has breathed new life into the French heritage brand with his refreshingly tailored take on sportswear.

Global Perspectives

“I grew up in Portugal, studied in London, worked in Italy and moved to Paris. I’ve worked on projects with Nike and UNIQLO. That diversity gave me a broad perspective. It’s important because things are very relative when you go to one place or another. There are no formulas for fashion.”

Create the Future

“It’s great to find a starting point from the past, but it is just a base to write the future. It’s pointless to do a photocopy of a collection of something that is from the ’30s or ’40s. There are a lot of things that are interesting in the history of the brand, but then it’s about making them evolve.”

Travel and Collect

“I travel a lot, so I’ll add one or two days for myself to go see museums, galleries, vintage stores, or just to wander around. It’s not just when I’m in New York, or when I go to London or Paris, but it’s everywhere that I go. I always have a camera with me and I’m always seeing and collecting and buying books.”

Be an Individual

“Fashion has never been so popular for both men and women. What is good for menswear is a lot of the dress codes. It’s a good time to relax and be more of an individual about things. What looks great on someone might look like crap on another person. For me, it’s more about individuality. Whatever makes you comfortable and confident is the key.”

Design Process

“There’s always one starting point, for the Spring/Summer 2015 collection, we said, “Yachting”. We got pictures of the boats, we got all the pieces from the archives for sailing, then we started looking at representations of sailing elsewhere, in films and in art. Treating this idea of sails like transparency and lightness is what we wanted to translate into the clothes and how they were constructed. When the main kick-off idea is there, it can be fed by other disciplines and design and art.”