New Era makes hats. Brand New Era makes clothes. New Era: It ain’t just for your head anymore.
Dao-Yi Chow is the man behind Brand New Era, New Era’s first-ever in-house apparel collection. Chow, the current vice president and creative director of Brand New Era, also co-founded record-smashing fashion label Public School.
From there, Chow helped define the contemporary intersection of fashion and sportswear, first with efforts like Public School’s pioneering Jordan Brand collaborations and then with a series of successive endeavors ranging in scope from the reborn Sergio Tacchini to Tom Brady’s clothing line
“There’s so much crossover within the culture that it’s not even a conscious decision,” Chow tells Highsnobiety. “Sports have become so ingrained into the codes of streetwear and popular culture at large that you can’t really separate them.”
At New Era, Chow is arguably the best-suited guy to take the 104-year-old label into its next stage of life. Enter the suitably named Brand New Era.
Brand New Era is New Era’s “first namesake apparel line,” according to its press release, and it’s certainly the most fashion-forward in-line New Era offering to date, which makes sense. The company’s conventional oeuvre, after all, typically comprises more quintessentially sporty sweats, hoodies, and joggers when it isn’t collaborating with the world’s biggest brands.
But, also, this is New Era. It’s classic Americana, you know, still family-owned and operated.
As such, Brand New Era lives up to its name by operating in line with that century of heritage. Chow even describes Brand New Era as “an official American uniform vibe.” And by that, he means not only the thing that sports teams wear for a consistent look, but no-nonsense essentials that can be worn again and again and again, mixed and matched to taste.
“There’s something about a “uniform” that really excites me,” says Chow. “Finding joy in the consistency and banality of wearing the same thing everyday but finding new ways to make it fresh.”
That means classic clothes infused with an air of New Era innate sportiness, like mesh jerseys, plush varsity jackets, easy track pants, plaid overshirts that wouldn’t be at all out of place in New Era’s native Buffalo.
Simple enough but there’s also purpose in the cut and shape of the collection.
For instance, the first Brand New Era capsule, New Classics, releases September 13 on New Era’s site as a sort of mission statement for the line by reinterpreting the materials that comprise New Era’s signature headwear into apparel.
“One of the first thoughts was to take the OG wool surge fabric that you find in a classic 5950 [cap] and redevelop into something you could wear. Simple concept,” Chow explains, pointing out a baseball shirt as the epochal Brand New Era design.
“It’s not about just slapping the flag [logo] on a bunch of hoodies but rather highlighting those elements and recontextualizing the amazing things that already exist. There’s so much symbolism and heritage to play off of. It’s also important to set a foundation and not get too heady with the stuff. It’s always rooted back to how sport and culture intersect.”