Lacoste Creative Director Pelagia Kolotouros has created a custom walk-on jacket for Novak Djokovic at Roland Garros 2026.

Someone brought this into the house earlier this week and we haven't stopped talking about it since. The clay finish on the piece isn't inspired by the courts. It's actual orange clay from Roland Garros, worked directly into the fabric. Detail that sounds like marketing until you look closely enough to realise nobody invented it.

The brief, as far as you can reconstruct it, was to take the energy of clay season and make it wearable without making it literal. What Kolotouros arrived at is something more considered than that. 

A runway silhouette reinterpreted through the language of performance design, with sculptural 3D detailing, handcrafted finishes, and a large wolf figure running down the back. 

The wolf is Djokovic's spirit animal and the national animal of Serbia, a connection he's spoken about publicly. Every element of the piece is doing something specific. Nothing is there for decoration.

The clay detail is the thing we keep returning to over the counter. There's a meaningful difference between a brand that takes inspiration from its environment and one that takes the environment itself and builds it into the work. Using actual Roland Garros clay in the construction of a jacket worn onto that court is a creative decision with a completeness to it that most brand collaborations never get close to. 

The material and the meaning become the same thing.

Lacoste has been building its fashion and sport identity carefully for years, and Kolotouros has been the creative force pushing it toward something that earns both labels simultaneously rather than borrowing the aesthetic of one to dress up the other. 

This jacket is the clearest statement yet of where that direction leads when it's followed all the way in.

We'll be keeping this one on the wall for a while.

Shot of the good stuff.