“I was sitting in a cold stadium looking around and I'm seeing all these people, mostly men, wearing huge puffer jackets, and they were putting their jerseys over the jackets,” recounts Kristin Juszczyk, wife of San Francisco 49ers fullback Kyle Juszczyk, of her ah-hah moment. “And that's when the light bulb went off—they're cold, but they’ll do anything to represent their favorite players.” As is the case with many good ideas, it seems obvious in retrospect.
In partnership with serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, Juszczyk will launch Off Season January 7—a collection of elevated apparel for sports fans made possible through a collaboration with the NFL Players Association, and available to shop online. They’re starting small; the debut consists of unisex puffers celebrating five NFL teams—the San Francisco 49ers, Kansas City Chiefs, Philadelphia Eagles, Detroit Lions, and Buffalo Bills. Off Season spawned from the DIY ensembles Juszczyk herself wears to the games—for which she has gained quite the following.
The budding designer has been married to Kyle for five years, attending his football games since they met in 2014. “I just got sick of wearing the same three shirts in rotation,” she says. “I got inspired by the lack of options actually.” Juszczyk took her frustration out on Kyle’s old jerseys; she reworked them into NFL-branded equivalents of her day-to-day wardrobes: corsets emblazoned with Kyle’s number (44), bomber jackets with pieces of his high school jersey.
Juszczyk, 30, has no technical background in fashion; she graduated from Towson University with a degree in business. But with the help of countless YouTube videos, she turned the bud of an idea into a highly cultivated skillset. The first thing she made was a pair of sweatpants from shirts that said “100% Juice,” Kyle’s nickname. (Actually, the first thing she ever made was a couples costume rendition of Britney Spears’ and Justin Timberlake’s full denim look from Walmart jeans.) “Now if I look back at them, I cover my eyes, but at the time I was so proud.” She has since moved from simple silhouettes like loose shirts and sweatpants into cargo shorts and snowsuits—and she rarely repeats a look.
Her personal fan base is no happy accident. Juszczyk has been sharing her newly fashioned wardrobe along with snippets of the creative process on her Instagram and TikTok. Convinced others would delight in her creations, she reached out to people she thought might be interested, especially ones with big followings. “I knew that there was a gap in the market, and I knew that the only way for me to be able to potentially get an NFL license or to find a business partner is for me to place this in the right hands.”
Most notably, Taylor Swift wore a custom red puffer jacket emblazoned with Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce’s number, 87, this past January. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles was one of the first to wear one of Juszczyk’s designs, a custom puffer vest in support of her husband Jonathan Owens, who at the time played for the Green Bay Packers. The vest came with a plaid inner lining complete with a pocket from an old Packers T-shirt, a game-day flag, and, of course, an Olympic patch—all these details were shared on TikTok. Her custom designs have also been worn by Taylor Lautner, Brittany Mahomes, and Kyle’s teammate Deebo Samuel Sr.—and her Instagram following has since surpassed a million garner enough attention to attract Grede.
“To say Kristin was tenacious in her reach out is an understatement,” laughs Grede, who boasts an impressive resume herself. Grede, 42, founded Good American with Khloe Kardashian in 2016, is a founding partner of SKIMS, and a Chairwoman of the Fifteen Percent Pledge. “I immediately had that Taylor Swift jacket moment in my mind,” she recounts. The businesswoman’s philosophy specializes in identifying areas of the market under-serving women, this particular one she describes as an “unbelievable opportunity.”
Juszczyk courted Grede with intention. “I thought, ‘Who is someone who has completely transformed an industry?’ Of course, Emma was the first—and the only—person to really come to my brain,” says Juszczyk. Together, she and Grede, along with her arsenal of contacts and know-how, have built a team to scale Juszczyk’s designs into a business. And they’ve done well enough to secure licenses from the NFL.
Luckily, her Instagram has essentially served as a platform for beta testing. “I know what the demand is for certain designs and even where there is a lack of it,” Juszczyk notes, though most of the response has been extremely bolstering. One of her biggest focuses is quality, which is reflected in the pricing—vests start at $295, jackets at $375, and long coats at $495. “For years, I think fan gear has been really relegated to super basic, super low-quality apparel that you only wear at the game,” Grede says. “And what we're seeing is this massive, massive cultural shift. Sports are a part of everyday life, and fans want gear that reflects their lifestyle.” And timing is everything.
“Sports style has become so much a part of the culture,” Grede continues. These past few years, tunnel walks have turned into catwalks. Bella Hadid, Beyoncé, and Rihanna have all been snapped in sports jerseys. The Adidas logo has crept into the collections of Gucci and Wales Bonner. This past year, race car driver Lewis Hamilton sat front row at the Dior Homme show and Prada dressed Indiana Fever point guard Caitlin Clark, the first time they’ve dressed a basketball player for a draft. (Caitlin Clark has also worn one of Juszczyk’s designs, a custom vest.) “So many of the players have figured out how to use fashion as a tool that goes beyond the game,” Grede says. “There's this space between what is happening in merch land and what's happening in the designer realm to really fit most people.”
In tandem, women’s sports are bigger than ever, a movement heralded by athletes like Clark, Coco Gauff, Ilona Maher and more. They’ve cemented their role, no matter the league or position, athlete or fan, in the sports world. “Often the culture dictates how successful you can be,” Grede notes. “Men have woken up to women's sports and that creates an opportunity for women to be successful in the business of sports, sports merchandising, sports licensing, and building a company in this space. I think if we'd have tried to launch this company three or four years ago, I don't know that we'd have gotten such a great reception.”
Fashion, or choice of dress, is massively important to a sports fan. “When you go to an NFL game, I would say 85 to 90 percent of the people in the crowd are wearing something to represent their team, and there's something so nice about that,” says Juszczyk. Her outlook is one of unification, which is why she chose to make clothes for an array of teams, not just to satisfy her own allegiance. It’s for anyone who “lives and breathes their team.” And the puffers are just the start.