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Did you notice the ‘B’ baseball caps the models donned on KidSuper’s Autumn/Winter 2024 catwalk? How about the ‘Brooklyn’ zip-up peeking out beneath a fur coat? All were teasers of designer Colm Dillane’s forthcoming collab with the Brooklyn Nets — or rather, the team’s private label, bǝrō (pronounced borough).
In December, the Nets launched bǝrō outside of NBA licensee-designed products. It’s an outlet for more upmarket fashion offerings tied to the team, as well as an avenue for luxury brand collaborations. “We had a clear gap in the higher end of sportswear, streetwear type of product,” says Amanda Pong, the Nets’s senior director of merchandising.
This was a selling point for Dillane. “The label is more ‘high end’ than a normal sportswear collab, which was interesting for us, because we were doing a fashion show,” he says. “When you’re doing these shows, it’s hard to put stuff in that doesn’t look elevated.”
With bǝrō, the Nets are aiming to fill this gap — in doing so, taking basketball’s existing fashion tie-ups one step further. It’s the first to touch the luxury space. Others have launched in-house apparel brands, such as the Cleveland Cavaliers’s The Land Collective, but to date, pieces have leaned more merch than high fashion.
This crossover has been on the rise in recent years, as athletes’ front row presence grows (the uptick was major for SS24) and players’ arrival tunnel looks garner more attention than ever. Even the NBA now posts clips of its athletes’ tunnel walk outfits on their way to training and games. And Instagram account League Fits, which boasts one million followers, tracks these more closely.
“Now, more than ever, sports teams encompass a culture and community that transcends the sport itself,” says Danielle Garno, partner at Holland & Knight and fashion law professor at Miami Law. “It’s about fashion, music, food — it’s a lifestyle, and really, a brand identity. By creating a private label collection, teams are creating their brand identity with apparel that is ‘fashion’ as compared to just ‘merch’.”
She highlights the bǝrō collection’s debut items: a chevron cardigan ($150) and a chore coat ($250). “That is more of a nod to the culture and creativity of Brooklyn than your typical merch T-shirt you buy at a kiosk. It’s also a way to appeal to a wider consumer set that might want a more elevated look to celebrate their team.”
The Nets’s private label is as much an avenue for luxury collabs as it is for owned pieces. KidSuper is the label’s first major fashion collab, and is set to drop this autumn. “It gave me new perspective,” Dillane says, “how do we make something that feels a little bit elevated, but also is quite wearable for the average consumer or a Brooklyn Nets fan?”
On top of luxury brand collabs, the private label opens up opportunities for players to explore their own roles in fashion. The first to do so at the Nets is Nic Claxton (a League Fits-certified ‘All Star’), who is dropping a collection on 31 March. He designed the pieces alongside the bǝrō design team. VP of creative Kerry Paul (who previously held the title of creative director) had final approval. Sweats will be sub-$200, and a wool varsity jacket will be in the mid-hundreds range.
The bǝrō target audience is late 20s through mid-40s, basketball fans and courtside guests, Pong says — essentially, basketball and fashion fans keen to spend a little more than average merch prices, for more premium products. For the Nets’s 10th anniversary in Brooklyn last year, the team tested higher end pieces and price points. Think a $650 letterman jacket; $350 satin baseball cap; and a $225 knit sweater. “There was a huge appetite for it,” Pong adds.
A natural evolution
It may be the first time we’re seeing a team move to formalise fashion’s increasing overlap with basketball in this way, but players on the sport and fashion sides have long crossed over.
Last year, Mitchell S Jackson’s Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion traced the two industries’ long-time intersection, from the big suits of the Michael Jordan era to late-’90s hip hop fashion. Now, the tunnel walk is a mainstay, players are style icons and brands want in on the action. Most recently, Louis Vuitton named Spurs rookie Victor Wembanyama a brand ambassador. That same month, Off-White debuted basketball-inspired sneakers at Paris Fashion Week (models also carried basketballs in chain-link bags).
Now that teams have started bringing on in-house creative directors (the New York Knicks have Kith’s Ronnie Fieg, while artist Daniel Arsham heads up the Cleveland Cavaliers), a private label is the natural next step, experts agree.
“It is clear that sports is getting a luxury makeover, so any fashion line launching now would have to offer an elevated level of design and style,” says Simar Deol, foresight analyst at consultancy The Future Laboratory.
LA-founded clothing label Rhude’s collaboration with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2022 hinted at the evolving trend of fashioning luxury offerings at the team level. That, though, was done via New Era, rather than a private label. During this time, the Nets were planting seeds with designer collaborations like Phillip Lim for the Lunar New Year, also in 2022.
“We’ve been on a several-year journey to evolve our retail merchandising offerings to put us more at the intersection of basketball and lifestyle,” says Andrew Karson, EVP of brand marketing for the Nets. “We felt like this was the right time now to go one level beyond and create our own brand and bring it to the market.”
If this new, in-house approach goes well, the Nets are keen to explore a private label under the Brooklyn women’s team, the New York Liberty. It’s a wise move, Deol says, noting that, off the back of the success of the Fifa Women’s World Cup and WNBA, brands and teams should be watching women’s involvement with sports — and the power of their shopping and consumer habits.
They’re also looking at opening more public physical spaces to house the line. Right now, there’s a bǝrō store in the Barclays Center arena. Looking to the future, this could be a location outside of the arena, or at least one that’s street facing.
Who wins?
Karson declined to get into the exact profit split between the Nets and collaborators. Instead, he acknowledged that everyone is in it, in part, to profit: be it business and financial gains. The goal is to make sure these are met. “Each relationship is unique and we look for how we achieve everyone’s business objectives,” he says. “We try to find that common ground and then we get creative with how we create financial upside for all parties in these relationships.”
For players, it’s about developing and raising their own brand. “It’s a way for athletes to express themselves,” Claxton says. “[The collection] really depicts my upbringing, the Virgin Islands, my family, Georgia with the black and red.” He plans to continue to develop this outlet as his career progresses. “Hopefully I can continue to get more into fashion as I stay in the league.”
This was front of mind for the Nets. “The core of all of these conversations was: ‘Hey, Nick, what are you looking to accomplish? How are you looking to build your personal brand? And how can we align on these things?’” Karson says.
For brands, it’s about tapping into the zeitgeist — and also offers a touchpoint between the player and the league levels they’ve already been working on. Launching a private label offers a more direct line to the team itself, and in turn, the team’s audience.
“It was a special time for us to talk about being a Brooklyn brand,” Dillane says. “Sometimes when you just put ‘Brooklyn’ on a shirt, it feels like merch. But since this was a collaboration with Brooklyn, I could do it, and now I’m like, ‘oh man, I should’ve been repping Brooklyn harder from the beginning’.” Plus, he adds, it helps with inspiration, which is much needed when making 300-odd pieces for a fashion show.
Dillane is already being hit up daily for the Brooklyn jackets in his DMs, he says.
Collaborating at the team level has its own set of upsides, professor Garno says. For one, the brand is less dependent on a singular player. Though athletes have cachet as trendsetters and tastemakers — perhaps more so than models and celebrities — this type of relationship carries heavier reputational risk if an athlete were to do something to cause reputational harm to the brand, she flags.
But what happens when a team becomes the brand? Athletes’ partnerships with (and purchases from) luxury brands stems from a desire to be associated with that brand — and, by association, fans’ aspirations for this. If the team brings luxury in-house, can that aspirational element prevail?
If done right, Garno says. “I don’t think the luxury aspect automatically goes away if the team itself puts out a private label collection, provided that the intention behind the collection is to create a luxury product.” This, she says, comes through in design elements, fabrication and materials – and brand identity. “Teams already use this strategy by offering luxury packages and experiential events to their fans – it’s just a matter of applying the same marketing and exclusivity techniques to the collection.”
It helps a brand to tap a given team’s market. “Collaborating with a team’s private label may offer a direct line and connection to a team’s fan base allowing the luxury brand to help shape the brand identity in a particular market,” Garno continues. “This type of partnership may be seen as authentic to the team, the city and its roots and culture, which will help build brand and team loyalty.”
Dillane is keen to give back to the Brooklyn community, where he recently opened a 10,000-odd square foot space. “When you do collaborations with someone with a city IP, I think it’s cool to do something for the city,” he says. The details aren’t ironed out, but Dillane envisions a community-driven initiative. Perhaps he’ll open up his Williamsburg space to young Brooklynites to use its resources or take classes (it’s decked out with a recording studio, photo studio and gallery).
And beyond that? Unlike the Knicks, the Nets doesn’t have a creative director from the fashion world. At least, not yet. Would Dillane take the post? “I’m down.”
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