by After leading the Boston Celtics to a historic win in the NBA finals on Monday night, Paris Fashion Week is Jaylen Brown’s next big play.
The 2024 NBA MVP will debut his runway collaboration pieces with Namesake, the basketball-inspired brand from Taiwanese brothers Michael and Steve Hsieh.
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They will hit the runway on Saturday, and celebrate the collection with a basketball blowout on Sunday. 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. Each of them will design the jerseys for their respective teams.
“While I’m excited to see 7uice on the runway, I’m also excited to give my 7uice players the opportunity to experience the world of fashion and creativity on a grand scale,” said Brown as he hosted the game.
The game will take place in the northern 19th arrondissement of the city, far away from the glamor of Paris Fashion Week. “The goal was also to bring fashion week to kids who don’t normally have access to those things,” said Steve Hsieh. “We want to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible.”
“Often, major city events that attract large numbers of visitors and celebrities from around the world tend to create a barricade or overshadow the local communities and youth of that city. I don’t necessarily think it’s intentional, but a question, nonetheless. Everything is included. So with this event, everyone is welcome and everyone is included,” said Brown. “This should be an entertaining and interesting event for the public to be a part of.”
7uice thrives on its local community in Boston, and education and inclusion are Brown’s driving forces. He hopes to import that ethos to Paris and that the event will encourage the young people present to think big. “Your brand could be the next one to walk the runway,” he said.
Now a Paris Fashion Week regular, Brown said one key moment in his creative journey was walking into Virgil Abloh’s first Louis Vuitton show, a “nudge” that made him step into his own designer shoes.
Hosting the game is also a nod to the Hsieh brothers’ own status as fashion outsiders, running the business from Taiwan while showing in Paris. “We are not from a fashion city, and our passion is basketball. We’ve always wanted to make fashion more accessible to people outside of here [fashion] communal. Fashion has always been ‘tight,’ and we want it to be more open.”
The event will highlight the responsibility of designers to break that cycle and include young people who are left out of the fashion equation.
“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 just for fun: there are no plans to sell tickets or make money, and there will also be a performance from LA-based rapper IDK.
The collaboration pieces that will be presented on the runway combine the influences of traditional Chinese characters, Mayan motifs, Brown de 7 jersey, Namesake de 3 iconography, as well as chess influences in oversized blended graphics. Some pieces are also narrated with Jaylen’s old tweets and favorite phrases.
“Jaylen really believes in the power of words,” Hsieh said. The graphics depict chasing your dreams and other motivational sayings.
“The pieces are a strong representation and a seamless blend of both brands as well as Jaylen,” said 7uice creative director Shawn Plata, citing a focus on fresh shapes and functionality. “When everything was put together, a new collective identity was created for the pieces – the intellectual club.”
The idea to work together wasn’t just based on a mutual love of basketball, Brown said. The pillars of their brand are community, energy and style, and the Hsieh brothers’ “single-minded approach” also hits these marks.
“However, it was the fourth hidden ‘glue’ of the 7uice column that made me make the decision. [to collaborate]: family. Like the operations team behind 7uice, Namesake’s operations team is also made up of family and friends who share similar energy and visions as mine,” said Brown.
The Namesake collection is titled “Off Shore”, designed as a love letter to the Hsieh family’s fishing heritage and to the founding duo’s older brother Richard. The three brothers started the Namesake line together four years ago, but Richard soon left to take up the family fishing business in southern Taiwan.
“We want to honor his sacrifice, the loneliness and the process he went through [Richard] been through,” Steve Hsieh said of the responsibility of growing up and carrying the family mantle.
Aquatic touches referencing the family’s history of fishing have been seen on shoes and the use of nets on some pieces in recent collections, but they lean more towards a sporting aesthetic.
That will change this season as the pieces have also grown up, Hsieh said, with more tailored and slimmer shapes, and smart updates to warm-up coordinates. There will be formal versions of varsity jackets, short sleeve suits that exude mature polish and keep the sport undercurrent. There’s also a greater touch of the East this season in a wide variety of lapels and mandarin collars, Hsieh said.
The Namesake line is developing its offering of higher-end tailoring and sports-inspired wear at retail. “We’re trying to diversify right now,” Hsieh said, noting that the label is entering its strongest sales regions in China, Japan and Korea. A combination of tailored jackets with sports pants are the looks that resonate with their customers.
The brand opened a pop-up showroom in Taipei, Taiwan, in March. It is serving as a unique incubator and research center, Hsieh said. Open only five different days a month, the times are announced on social media, which brings in brand fans and followers. The one-on-one consumer connection results in high sales volume, as well as fostering a better understanding of what the customer wants.
Hsieh hopes to open a permanent retail location in Taipei by next year, and is also developing lifestyle lines and accessories, including bags, shoes, sunglasses and fragrances which he hopes to release next year too.
7uice staff won’t reveal the brand’s retail ambitions, but hint that “something very special” will be hitting Boston soon. Game on.
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