MANILA, Philippines—Visionaire, the so-called “haute couture of the publishing industry,” will roll out its 54th issue, Sport, in September, a four-volume collaboration with the legendary French clothing brand Lacoste, which is marking its 75th year.

The formal launch was made last week in a grand boat party on the Seine aboard the yacht Le Paquebot at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on Port Debilly, attended by some 800 guests, including fashion luminaries like Karl Lagerfeld (who presented his couture collection for Chanel earlier that day), Christian Louboutin, Riccardo Tisci, Stefano Pilati, Margherita Missoni, Grammy-winning music producer Mark Ronson, supermodels Coco Rocha and Chanel Iman (whose images appear in the Lacoste-Visionaire promotional photos), actresses Eva Mendes and Patricia Arquette.

Visionaire is known for breaking known formats for fashion and art publications. Produced only thrice a year since its founding in 1991 by friends Cecilia Dean, a former model, and Parsons alumni James Kaliardos and Philippine-born Stephen Gan, Visionaire has served as a forum for visual and performing artists and celebrities.

Visionaire frequently changes formats as called for by a theme. No. 24 Light, for instance, came in a battery-operated lit box of fine-art transparencies; and No. 53 Sound was a collection of original sound pieces and vinyl picture disc records in a portable music player. It produces only a limited number of copies per issue, unquestionably adding to its appeal.

Shirt as canvas

The Lacoste collaboration is Visionaire’s first “wearable” issue. The iconic pique polo shirt serves as canvas for the images created by 12 different artists. There will only be 4,000 numbered editions, divided into four sets, each set containing three shirts of varied sizes, and retailing at $250/set.

The Lacoste project comes on the heels of Visionaire’s much-lauded collaborations with high-end designer brands like Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, and Dior.

Working with an upper mid-end company like Lacoste should dispel any notion that the publication “is totally high-brow and snobbish,” said Gan, creative director of Visionaire. He pointed out that the mag has previously worked with mass-market labels like Gap and Levi’s.

“Any brand that has an integrity and is immediately identifiable, and it is what it is and doesn’t try to be something else, these are the brands that attract me,” Gan said in an interview at the Lacoste headquarters in Paris. “And these are the brands that, in the end, people gravitate toward. Our other rule is that we wouldn’t work with a company [whose work] we wouldn’t put in our backs. I’ve [been wearing] Lacoste all my life.”

Gan added: “When we work with a company or brand, we approach it like you’re sponsoring a gallery exhibition. You enable artists to express themselves and you try not to censor… We’re a forum; in a forum you can’t dictate… Lacoste is one of the few that have been very understanding of what the project is about. You could meet another company that just says, ‘We do these sneakers. We want you to put the sneakers on the cover.’ We can’t really do that… It’s not simple advertising, like buying a page.”

Collaborators

For No. 54, Visionaire enlisted fashion and art photographers Nick Knight, Thomas Demand, Peter Lindbergh, Thomas Ruff, Phil Poynter; painters Richard Phillips and T.J. Wilcox; frequent Visionaire collaborators Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin; and Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of M/M, a Paris graphic design firm.

The collaborators also include rather unlikely names: the musician David Byrne, Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar and R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe.

Karl Lagerfeld, who has photographed some of Chanel’s print campaigns, is also in the roster.

“I’m one of those pop-crazed people who always want to throw in a celebrity that’s big in another field,” Gan explained. “It’s interesting to know what they do on the side.”

In fact, he said, it was another musician, David Bowie, who broached the idea of reviving the 1930s tradition of album/portfolio/magazine collectibles in the early years of Visionaire. Injecting pop culture into the mix, therefore, “is very important for the thing we do. It’s not only purely for photographers or visual artists. [It’s for] anyone who creates an image. These are people we call visionaries. These are the people we do Visionaire for.”

(An unconfirmed report says Stipe’s bold red image of a concert crowd has been chosen for reproduction, to be sold at mass retail in Lacoste stores.)

The partnership between the two brands, perhaps, isn’t as off-kilter or forced as one may imagine. One only has to look at the history of Lacoste to see why.

While the Lacoste name is synonymous today with the famous pique polo shirt, it must be noted that its eponymous founder wasn’t only a champion tennis player but also a noted inventor and true visionary in his time.

Inventor, innovator

René Lacoste, whose life is being remembered in an exhibit at the Tenniseum Roland-Garros Museum in Paris (“René Lacoste Visionnaire” until Nov. 30), registered 40 patents in his lifetime, including the first steel tennis racket used by the likes of Jimmy Connors and sold several millions, the tennis ball-tossing machine, and of course, the polo shirt that popularized the family name worldwide.

It was his eldest son, Bernard, who built the name into a brand, while René focused on his other interest: aeronautics. Another son, Michel, is now president, following the death of Bernard in 2006. (In the Philippines, Lacoste is exclusively distributed by Stores Specialists Inc.)

René Lacoste also participated in the invention of the nose of the Concorde jet. Lacoste was an analytical man who seriously studied his own game and that of his opponents (his notebooks are included in the exhibit).

“He wasn’t physically the best, but he was really good in tactics, like a crocodile,” noted Daniel Maizener, a guide at the Tenniseum.

Lacoste belonged to a team of French tennis players called the “Four Musketeers,” who won the Davis Cup in 1927. It was in their honor that the Roland-Garros stadium was built. Now the venue of the French Open, Roland-Garros is also celebrating its 80th anniversary.

It may be apocryphal, but it’s believed that the Lacoste alligator icon began with a bet made by the Frenchman with his coach: If he won his match, his coach should buy him an alligator trunk. He lost, but his tenacity on the court would earn him the moniker. The symbol would first make an appearance on the athlete’s jacket, a style that’s being reissued this year.

Lacoste created the cotton pique polo shirt to replace the regulation long-sleeved and long pants uniform of tennis players in the 1920s, which were inconvenient and uncomfortable. It was unheard of and unacceptable at the time. But then again, most visionaries’ ideas almost always are.