Lacoste layers on color and luxury for the cold season

Let Lacoste swaddle you and your woman in double-faced wool this fall/winter. The famed sportswear label might just have the best new line to warm up couples on cold season promenade. And we thought romantic outdoor adventures and the need for relaxed, luxurious sportswear ended with last summer’s sails.

Lacoste is usually the go-to brand for off-the-rack everyday sophistication. And it has also been spurring male interest in its goods for cut-and-dried elegance that beg for movement and action. This year’s Fall/winter collection changes those brand dynamics.

Christophe Lemaire, the visionary behind this year’s punch-colored collection, introduces demureness in the brand’s outlook. The results are not regrettable, unraveling fresh new tacks on classic jackets and an even more surprising mastery over wool, stretch fabric and knit. More useful is his daring appropriation of tweaked sportswear for women, which are all about jersey-like drapes, and novel mixes of glam and outdoor.

Leggings are loosened at the ankles to allow space for boots and heels. If you have mixed feelings about buying your quirky lady a new mink to break up her lovely figure, then Lemaire’s mixing should be a safe bet. You could buy her luxe and still give her freedom of movement when you chase her in autumnal Central Park.

It’s an inherently limiting preoccupation to dress people for specific moods and activities. But Lacoste needed this collection to introduce the real flexibility of the label’s nature. It’s not that it had abandoned the casual, it’s more like it’s casually awakening that reptile to show more teeth.