Lacoste Porcelain Polo Shirt by Li Xiaofeng

Lacoste challenged Chinese artist Li Xiaofeng to create two different polo shirts for its 2010 Holiday Collector’s Series. For both, he had to adapt his work methods slightly, choosing blue and white shards with lotus and children designs from the Kangxi Period of the Qing Dynasty. The lotus grows from mud underwater to emerge as a flower, symbolizing purity and rebirth. Images of babies represent fertility, as during that period the high infant mortality rate meant that people decorated ceramics with babies hoping they would be blessed with children. The printed Porcelain Polo is limited to 20,000 pieces for both men and women, and comes packaged in a silk pouch stamped with the red seal Li Xiaofeng Lacoste logo. The Porcelain Polo will be unveiled in Paris on June 25th at the Musée des Arts et Métiers and then in Bejing in the Fall at Li Xiaofeng’s first one-man show organized by the Red Gate Gallery.