Venus Williams, Novak Djokovic, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Pierre Niney, and Wang Yibo reinterpret Lacoste pillars in the “Play With Icons” campaign.
Lacoste’s latest chapter opens with “Play With Icons,” a campaign that turns up the energy after last year’s “Play Big.” Where its predecessor went large, this edition focuses on the small design moves that have kept the crocodile relevant since 1933.
“Classics reinterpreted, icons recontextualized,” reads the brand’s press release, and the message is clear: the polo, the pleated skirt, and the new Lenglen bag aren’t relics—they’re starting points. Shot by an as-yet-unnamed creative team, the images land somewhere between sports portrait and fashion still-life, sketching a clean bridge from René Lacoste’s clay-court pragmatism to today’s street sensibility.
Five global ambassadors carry the story. Novak Djokovic and Venus Williams, permanent fixtures in tennis history, stand alongside French actors Adèle Exarchopoulos and Pierre Niney and Chinese multi-hyphenate Wang Yibo. Each figure pairs personal style with a house staple: Djokovic with a crisp polo, Niney with a zipped track top, Yibo with the Lenglen, Exarchopoulos in a pleated mini, and Williams in a sculptural skirt that reads like sport re-imagined as eveningwear.
Williams’s portrait stops the scroll. Wrapped in brown Lacoste knit, she appears to rise from a fan of pleats arranged on the floor, one hand cupping a tennis ball as if it were a pearl. The pose nods to her record-breaking power while recasting the uniform as something closer to couture.
Equally playful is Exarchopoulos’s frame: the actress slips the Lenglen bag around her hips, letting its curved silhouette stand in for a skirt. The swap hints at the house’s confidence in its accessories and, more broadly, its willingness to let form cross lines between categories. With “Play With Icons,” Lacoste keeps its heritage in place—and moves the pieces just enough to keep the game interesting.
