After leading the Boston Celtics to an historic NBA finals win 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.
They’ll hit the runway 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 backed by Namesake in front of an audience of about 1,000 people. They’ll each design the jerseys for their respective teams.
“Although I’m excited to see 7uice on the runway, I’m more excited to present the opportunity for my 7uice players to experience the world of fashion and creativity on a high scale,” Brown said of hosting the game.
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The game will be held in the city’s northern 19th arrondissiment, far away from the Paris Fashion Week glamour. “The goal was also to bring fashion week to kids that usually don’t have access to those things,” added Steve Hsieh. “We want to make it as inclusive and accessible as possible.”
“Oftentimes, major city events that attract a high traffic of visitors and celebrities from around the world tend to form a barricade or cast a shadow on that city’s local communities and youth. I don’t necessarily think it’s intentional, but an issue, nonetheless. Inclusion is everything. So, with this event, all are welcomed and all are included,” Brown said. “This should be an entertaining and interesting event for the community to be a part of.”
7uice thrives on connection with its local community in Boston, with education and inclusion being Brown’s driving forces. He hopes to import that ethos to Paris and that the event will inspire the youth attending to think big. “Your brand could be the next one gracing the runway,” he said.
Now a Paris Fashion Week regular, Brown said one seminal moment in his creative journey was sneaking into Virgil Abloh’s first Louis Vuitton show, a “nudge” that led him to step into his own design 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’re not from a fashion city, and basketball is our passion. We’ve always wanted to make fashion more accessible to people outside of this [fashion] community. Fashion has always been a ‘gatekeeper,’ and we want it to be more open.”
The event will emphasize the responsibility designers have to break that cycle and include young people usually left out of the fashion equation.
“I think of the joy of seeing all these people together [at the game], and that brings more happiness to us as a family than just the show,” he said. It’s purely for fun: there’s no plan to sell tickets or monetize merch, and there will also be a performance from L.A.-based rapper IDK.
The collaboration pieces that will be presented on the runway combine influences of traditional Chinese characters, Mayan motifs, Brown’s jersey number of 7, Namesake’s iconography of 3, as well as influences from chess in blended, oversized graphics. Some pieces are also infused with Jaylen’s old tweets and favorite phrases.
“Jaylen really believes in the power of words,” said Hsieh. The graphics represent chasing your dreams and other inspirational sayings.
“The pieces are a strong representation and 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 combined, a new collective identity for the pieces was formed — the intellectual club.”
The idea of working together was not just built 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 marks, too.
“However, it was 7uice’s hidden fourth ‘glue’ of a pillar which led me to the decision [to collaborate]: family. Much like the operation team behind 7uice, Namesake’s operation team also consists of family and friends that share similar energy and visions with my own,” said Brown.
The Namesake collection is titled “Off Shore,” designed as a love letter to the Hsieh family’s fishing heritage and the founding duo’s oldest 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 make a tribute to his sacrifice, the loneliness and the process that [Richard] has been through,” Steve Hsieh said about the responsibility of growing up and carrying the family mantle.
Aquatic touches that reference the fishing family’s history have been visible on shoes and use of netting on some pieces in recent collections, but they have mostly leaned in to the sport aesthetic.
That will shift this season as the pieces have grown up too, said Hsieh, with more tailoring and sleeker shapes, and clever updates of warm-up coordinates. There will be formal versions of varsity jackets, short-sleeve suits that exude mature polish while keeping that sport undercurrent. There are also more Eastern touches this season in a wider variety of lapels and Mandarin collars, Hsieh hinted.
The Namesake line is developing both its more upscale tailoring offering and sports-inspired wear at retail. “We are trying to diversify at the moment,” said Hsieh, noting the label is homing in on its strongest sales regions of China, Japan and Korea. The looks resonating with their customers are a mix of tailored jackets with sporty pants.
The brand opened a showroom-slash-pop-up store in Taipei, Taiwan, in March. It’s served as a unique incubator and research center, Hsieh said. Open only five varying days a month, the times are communicated on social media, which brings in brand fans and followers. The one-on-one consumer connection has resulted in high sales volume, as well as fostering a better understanding of what their 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 a fragrance that he also hopes to release next year.
The 7uice team won’t reveal the retail ambitions for the brand, but hints that “there will be something very special” hitting Boston soon. Game on.
