It started as a A white bodysuit, emblazoned with number and initials.
Taylor Damron had made it for her cousin, Browningâs girlfriend Stephanie Niles, to wear to the Jan. 7 game against the Cleveland Browns. Then, the outfit went viral.
âThe next day, I woke up, and the world had kind of fallen in my lap,â Damron, 29, says.
Damronâs design rocketing to internet fame is just one story of how womenâs fan apparel has found itself in the spotlight. Just a few days later, Taylor Swift would with boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefsâ tight end number for his game against the Miami Dolphins. Within a month, would score a NFL licensing deal.
These meteoric success stories have illustrated the potency of a market for womenâs sports apparel that merges fashion and fan culture. They have also highlighted how hard it is for smaller, independent creators to break into the business â especially Black designers, who popularized and innovated sportswear-as-womenswear two decades ago.
Before Swift catapulted Juszczykâs clothes to a new level of attention, the 29-year-old designer built a following online by repurposing jerseys into more high-fashion pieces â corsets, suits, skirts â for herself as she attended San Francisco 49ers games to support her husband, fullback Her has spread to other playersâ partners and supporters across the league, including Taylor Lautner and
Before Juszczyk sent Swift and Mahomes jackets for the Jan. 13 game, she had about 100,000 followers, according to Social Blade. Within a month, she had more than 1 million.
With her official license in hand, Juszczyk designed puffer vests commemorating sported by celebrities. One such vest sold for $75,000, with proceeds going to the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Juszczyk herself wore a jacket stitched from jerseys, an ode to her husband's football career, for Sunday's big game.
While playersâ wives and girlfriends have long represented their partners with custom designs, adopting team colors, logos and numbers, the interplay of fashion and gameday apparel was energized in the â90s and early aughts, when Black artists were âpushing the needle of what was cool and trendy,â says Tayler Adigun, a culture and style writer.
âA lot of up-and-coming entertainers in the Black sphere maybe had difficulty getting larger names or fashion houses to want to outfit them or costume them for events and award shows and performances, so they kind of had to be a little bit more innovative in their approach," Adigun says. âItâs something that was definitely born out of necessity.â
It led to a fusion of sportswear, fan merchandise and cutting-edge design, she says. And, of course, iconic looks: blue North Carolina jersey dress was one. Then there was in a floor-length Washington Wizards dress. Carey's dress prompted a surge of interest and the NBA increased the designs they had in their NBA4her collection, according to a .
When Larena Hoeber began doing research on women and sports, she didnât set out to study apparel. But women kept bringing up how difficult it was to find something they actually wanted to wear to rep their teams. A decade ago, with three key principles: âpink it, bling it, shrink it,â Hoeber says.
Sports leagues not taking risks on smaller creators is to their own detriment, says Hoeber, a University of Regina professor who has written about womenâs sportswear and its perceptions. Smaller designers sometimes understand the market, and womenâs varying desires, better.
âWhatâs really critical for women, I think, as sports fans, is they want the official logo, like they want it to look like, âThis is it. Iâm supporting my team,ââ she adds. âSo they want that, but they want it in clothing that matches their style.â
Women have wanted variety, and sports leagues have often underestimated the market, leading to innovation. Damron, who designed Niles' viral bodysuit, launched a of themed clothing that nod toward league teams after an outpouring of interest.
At employee Sara Gourlay saw a chance to rework vintage jerseys that weren't selling â they became women's streetwear, including corsets and crops, says Zak Miller, head of operations. The mission of the company is sustainability, and even without licensing deals, they've partnered with big brands like Adidas and Nike, or even the to keep clothes from ending up in landfills.
âI thank Kristin just for the fact that, like, hey, sheâs brought some visibility to an industry that has been around for a period of time right now,â Miller says.
Her high-fashion pieces stand out among other NFL license holders, which include powerhouse companies like Nike, Under Armour and Fanatics. (Juszczyk isnât alone, though: Kiya Tomlin, a designer whose husband Mike Tomlin is the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, has a license for her high-end apparel.)
Juszczyk did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the NFL said that the league has a standard application process for all partners, like Juszcyzk. A number of programs seek to make it easier for smaller companies to partner with the league, he added.
Twenty years ago, when fashion like this was taking shape, there werenât the same partnerships and opportunities, Adigun says.
On one hand, Alexis Robinson, 32, is glad to see Juszczyk got a license.
âIâm glad more of this stuff can start being made,â Robinson, a Black designer who runs says. âAnd then on the other hand, itâs like it sucks because itâs been getting made for a long time and itâs just the process has been nearly impossible.â
Robinson started by making cropped denim jackets for herself. As they caught on, she started looking into licenses. It kicked off applications to all major leagues â from basketball, to football, to hockey and baseball. While it was a relatively simple process, with fees for all of them, she never heard back about her application to the NFL.
The upfront costs were too steep for another Black designer, De'fron Fobb, 45, who wanted to craft items when the made the Super Bowl in 2010. Since then, the Louisiana native has focused on college sports. Heâs followed Juszczykâs work for a while, he says.
âShe does great work. Her designs and custom stuff is amazing,â he says. âBut again, sheâs fortunate enough to be in that field. So itâs a different lane for her than it is for most small business, like myself.â
Hoeber hopes the attention will open the door for more creators.
âWomen are not a homogeneous group or a homogeneous market,â she says. âI think weâre starting to see cracks with recognizing that, it wasnât just an offering of, âWeâre going to take the menâs stuff and shrink it down to women.ââ
Brooke Schultz, The Associated Press
