All signs say that 2021 is going to be the year of Jerry Lorenzo. The designer, who established his brand Fear of God in 2013, has been on a steady rise since, collaborating with Kanye West and Justin Bieber, partnering with Ermenegildo Zegna to redefine tailoring, and launching an Essentials collection. He capped this year off with Frances McDormand wearing his hoodie and suit on the latest cover of Vogue. Now, he’s adding another notch to his belt: a first-of-its-kind partnership with Adidas’s basketball division.
Adidas Basketball is embarking on a long-term“creative and business” project with Lorenzo that will see him embedded in every element of Adidas’s basketball business, as well as its lifestyle categories. A press release confirms that this new deal will help establish Fear of God Athletics, the third offshoot of the brand alongside its main collection and Essentials, though it’s not clear whether the products created with Adidas will be co-branded or exist under Adidas’s main product lines. Whatever comes of the partnership, it’s sure to sting for Adidas’s chief competitor, Nike, which was releasing collaborative basketball-themed collections with the designer as recently as November 2020.
In a release for the Adidas project, the designer said, “This is a role that is [so] unprecedented in its very nature and nuanced attribution that it defies all titles and traditional definitions. This is a fearless move where shared vision and conviction are at the heart of the accretion of two brands shaping sports and culture, with the purpose to truly multiply our nuanced strengths to revolutionize the performance basketball industry forever. Adidas and Fear of God share the same dream for the future of basketball, on and beyond the court, and we look forward to changing the face of the industry through a new model that will unfold before us in the coming years.”
Lorenzo’s designs tend to sell out instantly and can fetch high resale prices on the secondary market. But to chalk up his success to “hype” is a mistake. Lorenzo’s 360 view of fashion, where suiting and hoodies are not diametric opposites but can live in harmony, is exactly what makes his vision appeal to a younger, more plugged-in consumer. “My gifts and talents aren’t in the artistic, conceptual expression of fashion,” he told GQ. “It’s more in like: How do you make something sophisticated for everyday reality?”