Dao-Yi Chow is leveraging New Era’s more than 100-year heritage in headwear and translating it to apparel for his debut collection as creative director of Brand New Era.
The American fashion designer, who previously cofounded Public School and was the former codesigner at DKNY, is gearing up to debut his first apparel, accessories and headwear collection under Brand New Era on Sept. 13. Chow was named creative director of Brand New Era, the apparel-focused subbrand of sports lifestyle company New Era, last spring.
“New Era has been a constant brand that has been with me at every kind of point in my life, from high school throughout all of our Public School years when we were partnering with New Era and collaborating on a whole bunch of products,” Chow said about taking on the role. “The opportunity to create something new for a brand that’s been around for 100-plus years that has all this authenticity, credibility and legacy was an opportunity that I couldn’t pass up. New Era is a unique brand in the sense that it sits at the crossroads between sports and culture in a way that not many brands can say that they do.”
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Chow explained his design process for the debut apparel collection started by immersing himself in New Era’s history, most notably in the brand’s popular 59Fifty baseball cap, which has been a fixture in the sports world since it was introduced 70 years ago.
The hat has been licensed for partnerships with sports leagues like Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, as well as by fashion brands including Kith, Fear of God, Gucci, Supreme, and Chow’s Public School.
Chow stated it was important to him that Brand New Era’s apparel collection reflect the brand’s heritage and made sense to the loyal New Era customer who is familiar with the 59Fifty cap.
“The majority of people really know New Era for headwear — for making the best headwear in the business — and then obviously having this cultural icon, which is the 59Fifty silhouette that’s become the standard-bearer in terms of headwear,” he said. “So, it was trying to figure out logically what is the next step? Like building off all those incredible things that New Era has done around headwear and pulling those aspects into an apparel, headwear and accessories collection that makes sense.”
The debut collection is broken up into three capsules: New Classics, Prototype and Graphic Fundamentals. All the capsules include apparel, accessories and headwear and are designed with Chow’s affinity for functionality.
Chow paid respect to New Era’s heritage with the debut collection in several ways. Most prominently, the designer utilized the same fabrics used in New Era’s 59Fifty cap for apparel styles in the New Classics capsule. He explained the fabric was softened to work in apparel styles, such as a classic baseball jersey silhouette.
The Prototypes capsule includes “everyday essentials” rooted in comfort and the Graphic Fundamentals capsule reimagines New Era’s archival graphics for sportswear styles.
“I’ve always drawn inspiration from sport and trying to infuse that into my work,” Chow said. “When you think about sport, you think about functionality and you think about comfort. You think about enhancing performance and you think about all the codes that that sport represents. That went hand in hand with my vision for the collection — not only my familiarity with all the nuance and power of what sport represents, but also taking the culture side of things. New Era has transcended sport and certainly become a mainstay in not only hip-hop culture, but just culture at large.”
Brand New Era is releasing a campaign for Chow’s debut collection. The campaign was photographed by Ari Marcopoulos, styled by Matthew Henson and features next-generation talent as models, like Carlisle Aikens, Fisher Smith, Jonah Lowe and Idriys Ali-Chow, who is Chow’s son.
“The sentiment of the collection is this amazing community that New Era has built,” Chow said. “Also being able to inject my own community into all the work. So, all these people who I admire and respect creatively being able to collaborate with them, not only on product, but also on content and just the vision of it all, it really feels like a big family affair.”
Going forward, Brand New Era is planning a New York pop-up to coincide with the collection’s launch.
