Interview: Mitchell & Ness Talks to Us About Throwback Unis, Creative Strategy, and the Toronto Raptors

Mitchell & Ness tells us how they decide what jerseys to retro.

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Complex Original

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Philadelphia’s Mitchell & Ness has been making jerseys for a long time—established in 1904, by 1933 the company was making the on-field uniforms for the hometown Eagles, followed by the baseball Athletics (then also based in Philadelphia) five years later. Fifty years later, their expertise led a collector of vintage baseball jerseys who had several in need of repair to their door, and Mitchell & Ness realized that they could use the same techniques to make exact replicas. What started with baseball eventually grew to encompass all major professional sports save soccer. The entire “throwback” trend started here.

By the time Lynn Bloom, Mitchell & Ness’ Director of Merchandising, Authentics joined the company a decade ago, the throwback wave had crested and broke. In the early 2000s, rappers and regular folk alike had loaded up on size XXXXXXL jerseys and warmups—the more obscure the better—in a seemingly neverending game of one-upsmanship. The jerseys themselves were timeless, but style, alas, is not. Giant jerseys went the way of equally oversized pinwheel hats, and all went either to the back of the closet or to Goodwill.

Nostalgia, however, never goes out of style. And while Mitchell & Ness jerseys are no longer de rigueur at every party, they still have a dedicated fanbase. In a sense, things are back to where they were in the '80s, when jerseys were bought not based on what they looked like (and whether someone else had it or not) but for whom or what they represented. We spoke with Bloom about how and why certain jerseys are chosen for reproduction over others, the importance of being exact, and the love everyone seems to have for a certain red dinosaur.

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One thing I’ve always been fascinated with: You have the breadth of all of sports history to draw from when it comes to retro-ing jerseys, but you can only pick so many. Where does that decision-making process start?

We generally work a year out, so right now I'm working on Spring ‘16. The first thing I look at is if there are any anniversaries or anything really interesting that we would want to celebrate or commemorate by bringing a jersey back. Do we hear that a player’s jersey is getting retired or someone’s getting into the Hall of Fame? Is there anything that we can anticipate will be happening?

So, we’re talking about baseball in the 2015 season that we want to make sure is going to be talked about—it’s going to be a big deal. We want to make sure we have a jersey to go along with that. We just recently signed Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz, so [this year] it would be for those three. We’ve never had their rights before so we want to get their jerseys out in the market as soon as we can. That's another thing—maybe we have a new player that 10 years ago or even five years ago wasn’t part of our program because they weren’t considered part of the Cooperstown Collection, but now they are so it's a new player and new jersey offering.

And then we’ll just get feedback from our website and social media. If we feel like there’s a buzz about a certain jersey or people have been asking for one, we’ll look to recreate that. 

Okay, and I guess to rewind that a little bit: These are all through individual deals with players, or are some players a part of a bigger pool?

It depends on the league we’re talking about. Spring is so baseball-focused and with MLB there’s two ways. If a player is in the Hall of Fame for the most part we have their rights, but there are some players who opt out and we have to do individual deals with. We’re not saying, "Oh, Nolan Ryan is in the Hall of Fame, we have his rights."

Let's say, like, Fernando Valenzuela: He is somebody that we had to reach out to his manager and people and get a deal done individually with him. In basketball, they all go through the Retired Players Association, so if players signed up for the RPA, then we can make their jersey. In the NBA, really the only individual deal we have is with Michael Jordan.

And then you’re also able to work with, at least on a limited basis it seems like, active players, right? I mean, as long as the jersey style is over.

As long as the jersey style is five years [gone], yeah, we can do current NBA players. We can do some in the NFL, but really not in MLB or NHL.

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How about the more obscure stuff? I think everyone remembers LeBron James coming to ABCD Camp in 2002 wearing a Joe Namath Rams jersey. Everyone’s gonna buy a Namath Jets jersey, but a Rams one?

We’ll occasionally get requests for the more obscure stuff. Not as much as we used to. We’ll look at it and talk to our big accounts, find out what interest there is. It’s not like it was in the early 2000s—the whole thing about jerseys then was more having one that nobody else had. So that was so much more trying to get stuff out there you know that people will be like, "Whoa, what? Who’s that? What’s that jersey?"

That’s not why people are really buying them now. Now, it's more just honoring the guys whose jersey they’re wearing, or because they like the color.

Would you say that it’s sort of come full circle to what Mitchell & Ness was doing when the company first started remaking historic jerseys?

Yeah, I think now more than ever it’s so much less a fashion thing. Like when I talked earlier about how we decide what jersey to make. Now it's tied back to history or to a specific region. For this spring, we’re making the Dodgers' Sandy Koufax 1965 home jersey because it's the 50th anniversary—he won the Triple Crown in '65 and it's the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers World Series.

More than ever, we’re tying it back to a moment in time; it's a complete circle, it's more of what Peter [Capolino] started. It is just telling the history of sports through the uniform.

Do you think we’ll see some of that back again? I’m thinking of things like the Spirits of St. Louis ABA jerseys.

I could tell you that the Raptors and the Grizzlies jerseys—you know, the more fashion and color-focused jerseys—are some of our best-selling ones, so I think that appeal is still there. We’re always trying to make sure that it ties back to history, but there is certainly the consumer that is looking at it from a fashion perspective.  

It's funny. From my perspective, it almost seems like the style and the history drive one another. I feel like the throwback craze in the 2000s sort of led to a greater interest in the players who wore them.

Absolutely. Yeah, like the Namath example you used: How many people knew that Namath was on the Rams, or who Austin Carr was on the Cavs? It did teach people who some of the game’s earlier legends were, who maybe aren’t in the Hall of Fame but are still an important part of the history. I definitely think they went hand-in-hand then, and that certainly helped educate a lot of young people and it definitely continues. 

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As far as the research that goes into it, accuracy is obviously a huge thing. Has that part changed very much? Now there are entire websites dedicated to old uniforms. Does that make things easier, or do you still have to go out and do the leg work?

I mean, [the Internet has] given us, like, an initial look at it. It's a lot easier and a lot quicker. We can access pictures immediately, but there’s so much on the Internet; you see a picture, and who knows if this is legitimate? You have to be so careful.

My first choice is still if we can to get our hands on a jersey or to work with the Basketball Hall of Fame or the Baseball Hall of Fame or whoever to get pictures from their archives or to have them send us something or to work with the collectors that we work with. I’m never 100 percent comfortable trusting pictures that I see online. We just have so many books and old Sports Illustrateds and publications where we’re certain we know what's in there.

Has there been any one particular jersey that you’ve been surprised by the demand for—whether it be through social media or, you know, people just asking for something—where you would be like, "Where is this coming from?"

That’s a good question. I continue to be surprised about the Raptors. I mean, the giant dinosaur with the purple: That’s consistently been, for the past two or three years, in our top-five selling NBA jerseys. It’s purple and it’s got a big dinosaur on it. It's not what I would think of as what a lot of people would be interested in wearing, but we make it every season because it's constantly selling out. There’s just something about that jersey that people love.

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What’s the one jersey you find yourself getting asked about the most?

I think the one that’s actually coming back out for this spring: The Houston Astros rainbow jersey which hasn’t been made probably in 10 years now. The folks that used to make it for Peter [Capolino]—the price would have been prohibitive. We’ve been looking for somebody to make it with that rainbow pattern. It's a complex manufacturing issue and we finally found somebody that was able to do it the way it was done. We’re excited for that one to be coming back next month.

Is there a particular style that hasn’t come back that's in the works? I don't know how much you can talk about, but batting practice jerseys got introduced a little later after doing the actual game jerseys. Are there other things similar to that being worked on?

Yeah, I think we’re looking at how the Magic and the Bird [shooting shirts] will do, because that style we made a long, long time ago and it's tough to wear. It's like a short-sleeve warm up so we haven't had them out in a long time because we just weren't sure how people would wear them. Back in early 2000s it didn't matter, everyone was wearing everything 3X and you know, things have changed. So we’re kind of looking at that, there's a lot of really good ones similar to that—there’s a great Bulls one that Jordan wore in his rookie year. It's like a full zip warm-up but it's short sleeved and its got like this really big collar, it's really '80s but it's fantastic. So you know, we’re kind of trying to see how we do with those two with the Magic and Bird and if they do well we’ll probably do a couple more of those.


Having been there a little more than 10 years, is it possible for you to watch old sports highlights and not immediately be drawn to whatever they're wearing?

No, no, it's not. I mean, I'm a huge sports fan, so I certainly don’t watch just for their uniforms or for my job, but, yeah, at this point I’m always looking and even questioning. I’ll see a highlight I’ve never seen before and my thought will just be, "Oh, I want to make sure that we did that right." It's almost like always working. But it's not a problem, it's a good thing to do. I'm not complaining about it.

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