A crocodile's tale

Each year, renowned French sportswear brand Lacoste invites a guest designer from outside the fashion world to reinterpret its iconic polo shirt and to challenge its production methods and processes in the Lacoste Holiday Collectors Series.

Last year the guest was Tom Dixon. This year it's Briton Michael Young, one of the most successful and influential industrial designers of his generation. In the early 1990s, his woven-steel works were showed in the Centre Pompidou and the Louvre Museum in Paris and his "Mid-Nineties" collection of furnishings for E&Y Tokyo was purchased by Die Neue Sammlung Museum in Germany and London's Design Museum.

For Lacoste, Young has created a polo with a crocodile skin pattern that literally swims up the front and around the back of the shirt. Instead of using a standard silk screen printing process, the heat-activated ink is applied directly to the cotton and then "baked", causing it to blister and look like a real croc's skin itself. The shirt comes in five colours for both men and women.

In addition to Young's polo available at Lacoste Flagships and Lacoste Corners, he has also created the "Plastic Polo+".

This limited edition shirt features the croc skin print covered with metallic leaf. Only 1,000 shirts are available for men and women around the world, in silver on black and gold on white.

Just 100 shirts are available in Bangkok and are being stocked exclusively by Club21.

The Nation