Lacoste's Godzilla Minus Zero Tees, Drawn by Takashi Yamazaki, Sell by Lottery in Japan

Lacoste's new Godzilla collection, the third by Essential Japan's count, is the one the film's director drew himself. Lacoste/Godzilla-0.0, named for Godzilla Minus Zero, went on sale in Japan on Sunday, November 1: four T-shirts at ¥16,500 each and a cap at ¥14,300, with graphics and a logo that Lacoste Japan's collection page says Takashi Yamazaki drew specially for it. The drawings are black-and-white sketches of Godzilla squaring up to Lacoste's crocodile, and the logo rewrites LACOSTE in the brushstroke lettering of the film's title, next to a G-0.0 mark.

The five pieces, as Lacoste Japan lists them, are an all-over-print tee, with the drawing wrapping from the front round to the back; a front-print tee; a tee with a smaller version of the fight on black; a black logo tee; and a black cap with the G-0.0 and LACOSTE marks embroidered in white on the front and the crocodile on the side. Toho's trademark line sits on every one of Lacoste's photos. Essential Japan, which reported the collection on October 23, puts the ¥16,500 tees at roughly $105 and the cap at about $91.

Lacoste

How Lacoste sold it

Lacoste Japan ran the release the way a streetwear brand runs a drop. Online sales opened on lacoste.jp at 10am on November 1 to registered members only, with a limit of one of each style and five items in all per customer. In most of its stores in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto and Fukuoka, the first day was a same-day lottery rather than a queue: at Harajuku, Shinjuku and Hibiya, 200 winners each, with lottery tickets handed out in a 15-minute window in the morning; at Ginza, Shibuya, Shinsaibashi, LUCUA Osaka, Takashimaya Gate Tower Mall in Nagoya and Canal City Hakata, 90 each; at Quartz Shinsaibashi, 70. Kyoto Takashimaya ran its lottery in advance through its own site, and the Haneda Airport pop-up and the Fukuoka Airport store sold it normally. Buyers in store had to have the Lacoste app and a membership before they arrived.

Lacoste

That is a long way from the first two Lacoste x Godzilla collections, which, as Essential Japan describes them, ran on playful variations of the crocodile logo and, in the second, Godzilla, Mechagodzilla and other kaiju-inspired designs. This one is closer to a movie tie-in than a logo mash-up: the director's hand is the product, and the launch was timed to the film rather than to a Lacoste season. Yamazaki wrote, directed and ran the visual effects on Godzilla Minus One, which won the Academy Award for visual effects, and Minus Zero is his sequel, set in 1949.

Godzilla Day, and what else is coming

The film opens in Japan on Tuesday, November 3, which is Godzilla Day, the anniversary of the 1954 original; in North America it gets IMAX early-access screenings the same day and a wide release on Friday, November 6, where its full-body popcorn bucket has already sold out at Fandango. Godzilla.com's own Godzilla Day guide lists more merchandise landing on November 3: a Brain Dead collection, with a free early-access screening at IMAX's Los Angeles headquarters that is already sold out, and Attack Peter artwork on Godzilla.com products; its Mofusand cat line at Godzilla Store US is already on sale. Brain Dead itself has not posted the collection or said what is in it.

Lacoste

What Lacoste has not said is where else it will sell the collection. Essential Japan reports that selected European markets follow on November 4, but Lacoste Japan's pages say nothing about Europe, and Lacoste's global Instagram account has not posted the collection at all. For now the Japanese stores and lacoste.jp are the only confirmed places to buy it, and the online store sells it to members only.

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