Vintage Izod Lacoste Khaki Pants Alligator Logo 70s

Izod Lacoste was a licensing arrangement, not a company. From 1952 to 1993 the French house let David Crystal — who already owned Izod and Haymaker — put the Lacoste name and its crocodile on American-made sportswear, borrowing the prestige of a French tennis champion for a domestic manufacturer. Americans, being Americans, called the crocodile an alligator, and the US licensing entity ended up named Lacoste Alligator outright.

The arrangement peaked in the late seventies and early eighties, when department stores gave Izod/Lacoste their own dedicated in-store shops — not a rack, a shop — stocked with jackets, sweaters, and everything else the name could carry. Shirts alone did $150 million a year.

Trousers like these are the evidence of that expansion. The adjustable side tabs are the giveaway, a detail carried over from tailored trousers and built for a man who considered a belt optional and a jacket likely. Country-club clothes, made domestically, sold on a French name. By the early nineties Crystal was deep in debt, sold his half of Lacoste, and the two names separated for good.

The logo everybody misidentified, on the garment nobody remembers they made.