Fashionable fan apparel is in the spotlight. There's still an untapped market for the NFL
ABC News
Taylor Swift in January donned a red puffer jacket with boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce’s number for a playoff game
It started as a fun project. A white bodysuit, emblazoned with Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Jake Browning’s number and initials.
Taylor Damron had made it for her cousin, Browning’s girlfriend Stephanie Niles, to wear to the Jan. 7 game against the Cleveland Browns. Then, the outfit went viral.
“The next day, I woke up, and the world had kind of fallen in my lap,” Damron, 29, says.
Damron’s design rocketing to internet fame is just one story of how women’s fan apparel has found itself in the spotlight. Just a few days later, Taylor Swift would don a red puffer jacket with boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce’s number for his game against the Miami Dolphins. Within a month, that jacket's designer, Kristin Juszczyk, would score a NFL licensing deal.
These meteoric success stories have illustrated the potency of a market for women’s 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 — especially Black designers, who popularized and innovated sportswear-as-womenswear two decades ago.
