Izod Women's Fashion Brand

Izod is a mid-range clothing company that produces dressy-casual clothing, sportswear for men, as well as footwear and accessories - and the first warning is one shoppers still need: Izod and Lacoste are two DIFFERENT companies. Izod Lacoste was formerly a brand name of sportswear licensed to Izod by Lacoste from 1952 to 1993. Izod and Lacoste both continue to produce similar piqué polo shirts, and are often mistakenly believed to be the same company. Lacoste polo shirts have the crocodile logo, while Izod has a monogram crest. That crest-versus-crocodile test is the single most useful identification fact in this profile.

The brand is perhaps best known for its short-sleeved piqué polo shirt, formerly produced by Lacoste and featuring the Lacoste crocodile on the left breast, now replaced with a color-matching or coordinating crest and left sleeve embroidery, and one variation is the 'IZ' patch instead of crest. So a modern women's Izod polo is identified like this: piqué knit, a crest that matches or coordinates with the shirt's colour rather than contrasting with it, embroidery on the left sleeve, or the IZ patch variation. Everything in the brand's long history below explains how the label ended up defined by that one shirt.

History: Izod of London, the Lacoste Years and PVH

Izod of London would become most notable for its pairing with the Lacoste shirt company from 1952 to 1993: Vincent Draddy began to license the Lacoste shirt to add prestige to the Izod line, 'Izod of London' became a brand known simply as 'Izod Lacoste', and while the shirts were equally Izod and Lacoste they became abbreviated and popularized as 'Izod' shirts - which led to the ongoing misunderstanding that the famous crocodile is the Izod trademark. During the early 1990s Izod Lacoste struggled to maintain the market dominance it had enjoyed in previous decades, and the initial reaction from Crystal Brands, Izod's parent company at the time, was to separate the two names and target two groups of customers at once: 'Izod' was re-introduced as moderate price point apparel in department stores, while Lacoste was renamed 'Lacoste Chemise' and re-positioned as a luxury lifestyle brand.

Eventually this tactic did not provide the financial gain Crystal had hoped and the license partnering ended in 1993; Sportloisirs S.A. purchased the Lacoste brand entirely in 1993, while Izod was sold to Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation in 1995. Izod is part of PVH, forming part of its Heritage Brands division along with Van Heusen, Arrow, Warner's, Olga, and Speedo. Read that division list as the brand's settled home: a heritage name among other long-lived American apparel names, positioned - as the 1990s separation already had it - at a moderate price point in department stores rather than in luxury retail. Apparel Search's PVH company profile and its price point definition page are linked from this page.

The Women's Line: 2003 Launch, 2015 Pause, 2018 Return

In 2003, the long awaited wholesale line of IZOD brand women's sportswear is launched in department stores across America by their at that time licensee, Kellwood Company - the founding fact of the women's range this page profiles, a wholesale department-store launch rather than a retail-store one. On January 7, 2015, parent company Phillips-Van Heusen announced that it would be closing all 120 Izod retail outlets due to an increasing competitive environment driven by more premium brands in the outlet retail channel, and this move would not affect Izod's growing wholesale business to department stores and other retailers. As of 2015, Izod no longer made or sold women's clothing except for the golf line.

On June 7, 2017, parent company PVH announced that it has reached a licensing agreement with Adjmi Apparel Group subsidiary Sports Products of America to manufacture women's sportswear, golfwear, and activewear under the IZOD brand beginning February 2018, thus signifying IZOD's return to the women's clothing market. That three-part range - sportswear, golfwear, activewear - is the women's shopping brief: dressy-casual sportswear built around the piqué polo tradition, golf clothing from the line that never paused, and activewear, bought at the moderate department-store price point the brand was repositioned to in the 1990s. Check the crest, not the crocodile, and the Izod in your hands is the genuine article this long history describes.