It took less than 24 hours for the Chicago Red Stars to sell out of every single size of their new 2019 home jersey, the Elevated kit. Pre-order sales for the next round, due in May, are brisk. The club’s video launching the jersey already has over 100,000 views on Twitter.
Behind the success was eight months of work from the team’s designer, support from the entire front office, over 50 versions of the design, and as Chicago Red Stars owner Arnim Whisler puts it, “the internal passion to get it right.”
Advertisement
Whisler, creative manager Anthony Guagliardo, director of communications and marketing Justyne Freud, and defender Sarah Gorden all spoke to The Athletic about the design, the process, the meaning, and the reaction to the Red Stars’ Elevated kit, the most iconic approach to a uniform in American women’s professional soccer.
Elevating the game.
The 2019 home kit.pic.twitter.com/W4LekRYMiT
— Chicago Red Stars (@chiredstarsPR) April 14, 2019
The design
Originally from Chicago, Guagliardo had always wanted to work in sports. After landing his current job with the Red Stars about a year ago right out of college, he knew early on that the design for the upcoming jersey was going to be on his plate. It turned into a months-long project.
“It was a long process, a lot of back and forth,” Guagliardo told The Athletic. “When it finally came time to actually design the jerseys, I think I ended up going through at least fifty different ideas and iterations of it.”
And in the end, the team went with none of those 50 designs, which included other Chicago-inspired designs as well as a few inspired by Nike’s approach to the U.S. national team kit.
“We came down to one or two of them,” he said. “They got axed at the last minute.”
Last minute in this case meant October of 2018—months before the 2019 season would start up, but late in the game to turn around a design that could make it into production on time. So Guagliardo started again from scratch, and took inspiration from the city’s public transportation system.
“I really wanted to do something with the L,” he said, referring to Chicago’s intra-city rail system, also commonly called the “El” in reference to the elevated tracks on which many of the lines run. “I thought, why not go a little crazy here and do something completely new? And that’s how I landed on this Elevated design.”
Advertisement
Where he landed was a maze-like design of the city of Chicago itself. The L runs through the entire pattern on the front of the jersey, with the city’s Loop clearly visible. Whisler compared the design to every map of Chicago he’s ever seen, with Lake Michigan clearly featured on the right.
Guagliardo ruled out a more minimalist version of the L first.
“That felt too incomplete to me,” he said. “It would look too weird, even if people would understand what it was.”
The goal wasn’t just designing a jersey that would look good in the stands of SeatGeek Stadium. The Red Stars were dreaming bigger, which meant he wanted to “make it more visually appealing to not only the average fan, but even the non-fan, who might just see it on the street and think, oh that’s cool, and then learn who the Red Stars are.”
A jersey made for Chicago.
The Elevated Kit. pic.twitter.com/29ps60reSQ
— Chicago Red Stars (@chiredstarsPR) April 14, 2019
The easy way was out. The pattern was in. The inspiration came from how the streets and transportation system of Chicago interlock and interweave.. Guagliardo spent an entire week (“nine to five,” he said) building the pattern. Then he spent the next week tweaking it.
“He spent I don’t know how many days hand connecting all those little streets,” Whisler said. “He was just dazed. He had been staring at that pattern, hand connecting to make sure there are no weird dead ends, and his head had just been living that for days.”
With the pattern done, the distinctive stars from the flag of Chicago placed on the front of the kit, and the Nike and team logos put in their standard spots, one thing remained—the back of the jersey. Guagliardo didn’t want the back to feel like it was from a different kit.
“We thought of the phrase, ‘put the city on our back.’” He said. “That sort of hit me. We should put the skyline there.”
Advertisement
He had thought the skyline had been done by too many people, but the Red Stars had their own spin on it now thanks to the pattern.
“That was the differentiator,” Guagliardo said.
The process
Differentiation is a big Red Stars word right now. Each person in the front office dropped it a few times while talking about the new jersey, but it’s for good reason.
“The battle we have as a town with eight pro sports teams is awareness and differentiation,” Whisler said. “We’re constantly looking for angles to get noticed.”
They’ve definitely gotten noticed for the new kit. But the concept for the Elevated kit was actually born ten years ago, thanks to Arnim Whisler, O’Hare airport, and a Hudson News store.
It’s easier to let him explain.
“You walk through O’Hare, where you see the Hudson News store with all the stuff you have to buy before you get on the plane. There’s always a display of Chicago gear. And it’s the Cubs or the latest winner, or some generic Chicago thing. And we always thought, if you nail the jersey, like really nail the jersey, it would be in all the Michigan Avenue tourist stores, it would be at O’Hare. That’s always been the idea, to become this iconic piece of Chicago in the way it views itself.”
They had the design thanks to Guagliardo. Next up: production, which posed its own set of challenges. Nike is an official sponsor of the NWSL. Until 2019, Nike had provided stock kits for each season, though some small levels of customization were available, and a few teams had pushed it as much as possible (the Red Stars included).
“This one was a lot more complex,” Whisler said. “You just look at the build, and the wrap, and the way it goes around the back, and the pattern has to interlock.”
By mid-November, Guagliardo and the Red Stars had pushed the new design concept over to Nike for approval. The team’s director of communication and marketing, Justyne Freud, was in charge of the proofing process. It took six or seven rounds with Nike, just to make sure everything—especially the pattern—was right.
Advertisement
“We had a good month or two months once we finally got the proofs correct, and by the time they were shipped to us, where I was just like, ‘I hope it’s right, I hope it’s right, I hope it’s right,’” she said. “And we opened the box, and I was very nervous, but everything turned out completely correct.”
The final element was the actual launch. Like the making of the jersey itself, it required a shift in focus, especially in a World Cup year.
“We’ve known that we hit the families, we’ve known that they’ve bought our jerseys, their kids have grown up in our jerseys,” Freud said. But now how do we switch? We’re not just a women’s soccer team. It’s even more than just women’s sports. At this point in time in 2019, it’s sports.”
The jersey’s launch video was the Red Stars’ major entry point to this line of thinking. Produced along with creative agency The Times Chicago, the video features defender Sarah Gorden along with defender Casey Short and midfielder Julie Ertz.
“Justyne (Freud) said that she wanted to make a statement,” Gorden said. “And that’s the kind of person and group that we are. We want to make a statement. We’re not here to be average. We want to be in your face. We want to be loud. And the video was a great representation of that.”
The meaning
The jersey has been public for only a few days, but it (and Portland’s custom kits before) points to bigger things in the NWSL world. The league is catching up in new areas that weren’t possible at its launch in 2013. After seven years, two teams finally have a chance to prove that custom kits can result in significant sales numbers.
E L E V A T E pic.twitter.com/1XiODc0M30
— Chicago Red Stars (@chiredstarsPR) April 15, 2019
Whisler also framed the jersey in terms of the city of Chicago, rather than looking to the wider world of the NWSL. “We’re just doing everything we can to insinuate ourselves in the heads of Chicagoans.” (He’s also confident that the team finally has a jersey they would feel good about sending to Chance the Rapper.)
Advertisement
From the player perspective, the new kit and the new vibe feel like a fresh start. “To me, a lot of the equality stuff is played out,” Gorden said. “It’s a business. People are saying equality because they want to make money; they don’t actually believe in it! It is that F you attitude. I’m here to play soccer, and I’m here to kick ass on the field. If you want to come and watch badass women come together, then come to it! And if you have a problem with it, then stay at home.”
The reaction
Reaction to the Red Stars’ new kit hasn’t just been positive, it’s been enthusiastic on every level.
This is the next level above next level 🔥🔥🔥 https://t.co/NrzklHYC9j
— Aaron West (@oeste) April 15, 2019
Well done @chiredstarsPR well well done https://t.co/ZBFKfKVx0d
— Ella Masar (@emasar3) April 15, 2019
Well money, it was nice having you in my wallet. https://t.co/zZwvMsTdmY
— James Neveau (@JamesNeveau) April 14, 2019
As for Guagliardo, he’s mostly just relieved every element of the design is finally out in the world. “I don’t think it really hit me until moments before we showed it that, wow, we’re finally releasing this,” he said. “I’ve been working on this for like, eight months, and I can finally show people what it is. I can show more people than just my boss.”
The pattern doesn’t just live on the new jerseys—Guagliardo has used it on the season ticket holder package sent out earlier this season, and it now lives on in the team’s social graphics as well.
As Whisler said, the team wouldn’t have this kit and this reaction if they had outsourced the design. “At the end of the day, you can’t outsource passion. I think what you see in this jersey, there’s a lot of love. There’s a love by people who have put an awful lot of work into this team and this brand.”
Gorden is a local product, so the first look at what the team was working on for the new home jersey was a special moment for her, saying she was “blown away” by the design. Even just imagining the finished product had her excited: “I was like, wow, these jerseys would be sick.”
Having the city embedded in the kit itself is a reminder. “This game is bigger than just you,” she said. “You’re playing for a city, you’re representing a bigger group of people. I think it’s a great reminder of that, and it’s the culture of Chicago right on our jersey.
“And it has a coolness factor too, of course.”
(Photos by Daniel Bartel)