After leading the Boston Celtics to a historic victory in the NBA Finals on Monday night, Jaylen Brown’s next big play will be Paris Fashion Week.
The NBA’s 2024 MVP will debut his first collaboration pieces on the runway with Namesake, the basketball-inspired brand from Taiwanese brothers Michael and Steve Hsieh.
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On Saturday they will be on the catwalk and on Sunday they will celebrate the collection with a basketball blowout. 7uice will bring promising young players from Boston to compete with a local community team, supported by Namesake, in front of an audience of approximately 1,000 people. They each design the jerseys for their respective teams.
“While I’m excited to see 7uice on the runway, I’m even more excited to offer my 7uice players the opportunity to experience the world of fashion and creativity on a grand scale,” Brown said of hosting the game.
The game will be held in the city’s northern 19th arrondissement, far from the glamor of Paris Fashion Week. “The goal was also to bring Fashion Week to kids who wouldn’t normally have access to those things,” Steve Hsieh added. “We want to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible.”
“Often, major city events that attract many visitors and celebrities from around the world tend to act as a barricade or cast a shadow over the local communities and youth of that city. I don’t necessarily think it’s intentional, but it’s a problem nonetheless. Inclusion is everything. So at this event, everyone is welcome and everyone is included,” Brown said. “This should be an entertaining and interesting event that the community can be a part of.”
7uice thrives on connection with the local Boston community, with education and inclusivity being Brown’s driving forces. He hopes to import that ethos to Paris and that the event will inspire the young people in attendance to think big. “Your brand could be the next to grace the runway,” he said.
Now a regular at Paris Fashion Week, Brown said a pivotal moment in his creative journey was sneaking into Virgil Abloh’s first Louis Vuitton show, a “push” that led him to step into his own design shoes.
Hosting the game is also a nod to the Hsieh brothers’ status as fashion mavericks, running the company from Taiwan while performing in Paris. “We don’t come from a fashion city and basketball is our passion. We have always wanted to make fashion more accessible to people out there [fashion] community. Fashion has always been a gatekeeper and we want it to become more open.”
The event will highlight the responsibility designers have to break that cycle and engage young people who are typically left out of the fashion world.
“I think about the joy of seeing all these people together [at the game], and that brings us more happiness as a family than just the show,” he said. It’s purely for fun: there’s no plan to sell tickets or make money from merchandise, and there will also be an appearance from LA-based rapper IDK.
The collaborative pieces to be presented on the catwalk combine influences from traditional Chinese characters, Mayan motifs, Brown’s shirt number 7, Namesake’s iconography 3, as well as influences from chess in mixed, oversized graphics. Some pieces are also infused with Jaylen’s old tweets and favorite phrases.
“Jaylen really believes in the power of words,” says Hsieh. The images represent chasing your dreams and other inspirational sayings.
“The pieces are a strong representation and seamless blend of both brands and Jaylen,” says 7uice creative director Shawn Plata, citing the focus on fresh shapes and functionality. “When everything came together, a new collective identity emerged for the pieces: the intellectual club.”
The idea to collaborate wasn’t just based on a mutual love of basketball, Brown said. The pillars of his brand are community, energy and style, and the Hsieh brothers’ “like-minded approach” hits these points too.
“However, it was 7uice’s hidden fourth ‘glue’ of a pillar that made the decision for me [to collaborate]: family. Like the operations team behind 7uice, Namesake’s operations team is also made up of family and friends who share the same energy and visions as mine,” said Brown.
The Namesake collection is called ‘Off Shore’ and is designed as a love letter to the fishing heritage of the Hsieh family and the founding duo’s eldest brother, Richard. The trio of brothers started the Namesake line together four years ago, but Richard soon left to take over the family fishing business in southern Taiwan.
“We really want to pay tribute to his sacrifice, the loneliness and the process that comes with it [Richard] has experienced,” Steve Hsieh said of the responsibility of growing up and carrying the family mantle.
Aquatic accents that reference the history of the fishing family have been visible on shoes and the use of mesh on some pieces in recent collections, but they have leaned mainly on the sports aesthetic.
That will change this season as the pieces have also gotten bigger, Hsieh said, with more tailoring and sleeker shapes, and smart updates to warm-up coordinates. There will be formal versions of varsity jackets, short-sleeved suits that exude a mature sheen while keeping the sport under current trend. There are also more oriental accents this season in a wider variety of lapels and mandarin collars, Hsieh hinted.
The Namesake line develops both the more luxurious tailoring offerings and sports-inspired clothing in retail. “We are currently trying to diversify,” says Hsieh, noting that the label is focusing on its strongest sales regions: China, Japan and Korea. The looks that resonate with their customers are a mix of tailored jackets with sporty trousers.
The brand opened a showroom-slash-pop-up store in Taipei, Taiwan, in March. It has served as a unique incubator and research center, Hsieh said. Only open five alternating days a month, times are communicated via social media, creating brand fans and followers. The one-to-one consumer connection has resulted in high sales volume and provides a better understanding of what their customer wants.
Hsieh hopes to open a permanent retail location in Taipei next year and is also developing lifestyle lines and accessories, including bags, shoes, sunglasses and a fragrance that he also hopes to release next year.
The 7uice team wouldn’t reveal retail ambitions for the brand, but hinted that “something very special will happen soon” in Boston. Game on.
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