RB Leipzig x Nike x Supreme

athleisure Clo3d Collaboration Fashion football footwear Illustrator marketing soccer Sportswear

This is a story of a collaboration within a collaboration...

I believe the future of sportswear design doesn't lie within offices or design departments. Instead, I see designers collaborating together virtually through online meeting platforms and social media. We followed this theory to create some unashamedly savage sportswear.

I teamed up with football kit design guru, Marcus Led at ledgraphics (check out his awesome website www.marcusled.com/apparel-design ) to create the RB Leipzig x Nike x Supreme concept kit capsule. Marcus is a talented designer in his own rights and I was extremely excited to work on a collaboration project with him.

We wanted to explore and challenge ourselves by creating a street style influenced football range that involved the collaboration of a luxury fashion brand and a sporting organisation.

Below is the project we embarked on…

Why are brands collaborating?

Collaborations between luxury fashion brands and sport giants has reached new heights in recent years. PSG x Air Jordan, Serena Williams x Off-White x Nike and Juventus x Palace Skate just to name a few examples.

The two main factors are increasing brand recognition and profitability. According to American Express, collaborating brands on average gain profits of 1.4 times their investment.

Why Generation Z?

Generation Z are the main drivers of brand collaborating with the mentions of luxury and streetwear collaborations on Instagram increasing by 25%. No surprise which generation is our target market then!

Another important aspect of collaborations is footwear! The luxury x sport collaboration usually starts with the sneaker. Since 2016, mentions of shoe collaboration on instagram has doubled (+100%), so using Nike's sneaker background to create AF1 SMU for the capsule is a bit of a no brainer.

When it comes to graphic design for football kits, there are few better than Marcus. Using the graphic direction as a reference point, Marcus created some exceptional hyper-modern graphics which took the collaboration story to a new level.

At the start we made a conscious effort to keep the range tight and concise. A tactic copied from Supreme’s small and exclusive drops strategy. The range is based on research into related collaboration projects as well as our findings in the User Profile and Style Scape.

Together Out Spoken.

To show how the range could be marketed, we created a campaign around the phrase "Together Out Spoken". A phrase directed at the generation z market for the their out spoken beliefs and their wanting for unicity and inclusivity.

Engagement on social media for the project exceeded all expectations! Not only did people smash the like button in their thousands and commented with positive feedback but we also got reactions from RB Leipzig's official instagram sight.