Selectism Q&A | Felipe Oliveira Baptista of Lacoste – Backstage with Spring 2015

Moments after the finale of the Spring/Summer 2015 show, surrounded by mics, cameras, and selfie-enthusiasts, Lacoste‘s patient creative director, Felipe Oliveira Baptista, takes time to talk through the latest line, a collection that seems to sum up the brand’s past and present best. Sporting heritage meets future-friendly tech fabrics, old-school sailing insignia across the most modern of cuts, classic polos with subtle new details, the famous Croc bridging old and new. Placing men’s and women’s side by side, life on the sea was the order of the day, this nautical heavy showing introducing smocks, parkas and slick regatta styles in fresh light. Welded and zig-zag seams, ripstop nylon, macro sail prints, adjustable straps, everything cut with a sharp precision, volumes and silhouettes described as “a mix-and-match of contrasts.” Spring/Summer 2015 offered “style, comfort and performance,” the brand’s ethos since its inception in the 1920s.

Can you tell us a little about the background to this collection?

Well it all started with a couple of sailing boats Lacoste designed in the ’80s and the collection that went with them. So I built it around all those nautical references, the lightness from the sails, a warm weather feel alongside those functional elements. It’s a balance between natural and technical, the contrast between soft and hard in fabrics and cuts.

Who did you have in mind when working on Spring/Summer 2015?

I don’t think of one character, it’s such a big brand, over 1,500 stores worldwide. It’s more about a product. Pieces that are simple, immediate, but have something special. Perhaps a particular kind of French allure, chic but comfortable. A lot of people that grew up with the brand first approached it for sportswear, now they’re looking for something smarter.

How important are some of the details, the more technical elements?

It’s very exciting, one of the biggest innovations in fashion today, the idea of how we make clothes. It’s amazing how these developments have occurred, seams without stitches, ultra-light macs…That side of things is fascinating, and it’s also very Lacoste. Rene Lacoste himself was an inventor first. He created the polo by chopping off the sleeves simply because he wanted to be comfortable. His whole life was about that, making clothing multifunctional.

You used a lot of parkas tied around the waist…

Well this was inspired by military clothing, often jackets would have buckles that would allow you to clip them around your waist when you wanted to remove a layer.

Any particular pieces you looked forward to showing?

It’s always hard when you’ve just finished a show. They’re all your babies in a way. It’s difficult to choose. I love doing everything, the outerwear is really cool, I really enjoyed working on all the prints, it was like building a jigsaw puzzle.

Selectism Q&A | Felipe Oliveira Baptista of Lacoste – Backstage with Spring 2015 is a post by Lena Dystant on Selectism.