Lacoste swaps its crocodile for 10 endangered species — 1,775 polos, one per animal left

Lacoste's crocodile, drawn from founder René Lacoste's tennis nickname, had sat on the brand's famous polos for 85 years. For the first time in the brand's history, agency BETC proposed changing it — not to rebrand, but as a call to action about the global state of biodiversity, in partnership with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

IUCN experts helped select ten threatened species — the Vaquita, Burmese roofed turtle, northern sportive lemur, Javan rhino, kakapo, Cao Vit gibbon, California condor, saola, Sumatran tiger and Anegada rock iguana — and the Lacoste studio embroidered each in the same style as the crocodile. The number of polos printed per species matched the number of individuals IUCN estimated to remain in the wild: from 30 Vaquita shirts to 450 Anegada iguanas, 1,775 polos in total, unveiled at the brand's Paris Fashion Week runway show on 28 February 2018 and sold exclusively online in the US and Europe.

The arithmetic made extinction impossible to miss: a polo with only 30 copies exists because only about 30 vaquitas remain. Every purchase funded IUCN's Save Our Species conservation work. All 1,775 shirts sold out in 24 hours; the case entry reports +76% new clients, 600,000 social shares and 9.9M earned media, while IUCN saw donations multiply fourfold and saveourspecies.org traffic rise 200% that March.

The launch opened a three-year Lacoste-IUCN partnership and became a reference point for cause-driven product drops. In May 2019 the crocodile made way for ten more species: 3,520 polos for 3,520 surviving animals, sold across ten flagship stores that went 'crocodile-free' for a day and online, with all profits going to IUCN.