In what city was the first Lacoste store opened?

The first Lacoste store was opened in Paris.

Paris was the natural starting point for Lacoste’s retail history. The company grew from René Lacoste’s tennis innovations and his 1933 partnership with industrialist André Gillier, who helped turn the lightweight petit piqué shirt into a manufactured product. The brand’s first boutique was located on Avenue Victor Hugo in Paris.

The Paris opening connected the new label with the city’s long-standing influence in French fashion. Lacoste’s shirt was initially designed for tennis, but its clean lines, short sleeves and embroidered crocodile quickly made it suitable for everyday wear. A Paris boutique helped position the garment as both performance clothing and French sportswear.

This fact is sometimes confused with later international expansion, particularly the brand’s American growth under the Izod-Lacoste name. Those developments made the crocodile polo globally famous, but they came after the label’s Parisian beginnings. Marseille, Lyon and New York were important cities for later retail or distribution, not the site of the first Lacoste store.