How Kith Uses Sports to Stay Relevant
Ronnie Fieg is a master of blending the allure of sports culture with his growing universe spanning retail, fashion and luxury hospitality.
Welcome back to SportsVerse, my twice-weekly newsletter that tells stories you can't find anywhere else about the intersection of sports, fashion, business, and culture.
With the zeitgeist in fashion and culture so heavily focused on sports and athletes these days, Kith — the New York-based brand and luxury-streetwear retailer founded in 2011 — finds itself very well positioned.
Kith’s founder, Ronnie Fieg — a New York native who got his start selling and later designing footwear — has always been involved in the world of sport, and his connection to sports culture was further solidified when he was appointed as the New York Knicks’ first-ever creative director in 2022.
Long before that, he had leveraged the clout of Kith’s private clothing label to broker collaborations with sportswear brands and sports-adjacent brands from Nike to Aimé Leon Dore to New Balance to BMW, just to name a few. Kith also has a long running product collaboration with the NFL.
But this year, Kith has taken its sports marketing up several notches. All of its highest profile moments in 2025 have been in some way related to sports, and have been boosted by the retailer’s increasingly coordinated marketing and product development efforts with Adidas.
Last month, Fieg announced the opening of Kith Ivy — his exclusive New York members club complete with padel facilities and a $36,000 initiation fee — with interiors of its spa and hamman areas designed by Giorgio Armani shortly before his passing.
Meanwhile, Kith’s relationship with Adidas (which has existed for years but developed into a large-scale partnership more recently) has allowed the brand to benefit from the German giant’s sporting credentials and network of athletic talent.
Just yesterday, Kith released a co-branded football-fashion collection with Adidas, with the campaign featuring Paul Pogba and Paolo Dybala alongside Fieg in a tongue-in-cheek launch video.
Back in August, at Kith’s first runway show in over six years, sports culture’s intersection with fashion was on display everywhere you turned — starting with the invites sent out to guests ahead of the show. Kith even sent out shiny new suitcases stacked full of its latest capsule with Adidas Running, featuring six of the brand’s iconic silhouettes from the past six decades. The show itself involved athletes such as NBA star Jordan Clarkson, who walked on the runway.
Earlier this year, Kith released another Adidas collaboration, featuring beautiful sports-inspired tailored pieces modelled by the Brazilian football legend, Kaka.
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship. Kith gives Adidas the credibility and access that all sportswear giants crave when it comes to proximity to the streetwear and fashion communities. Meanwhile, Kith can draw on Adidas’ network of superstar athletes, benefit from its dominance in football in the lead up to the World Cup, and also play an increasingly important role in the brand’s mission to bring its running and football categories closer to the culture.
Using Sports to Solidify Kith’s Community
Times are tough in fashion right now. It’s harder than ever to convince people to buy expensive clothing and footwear, and harder still for multi-brand stores to differentiate their offerings sufficiently from their rivals or create a sense of exclusivity that keeps shoppers coming back.
You don’t have to look far for signs of these troubles, with the likes of SSENSE and the UK’s END Clothing falling on harder times of late.
One way these businesses attempt to survive periods of downturn is to be seen by consumers as far more than just stores, but rather as brands in their own right. They seek to become destinations — both physical and digital — for people to gather, share common interests, and, of course, buy lots of clothing and footwear.
This is exactly the playbook long ago settled upon by Kith. Building a sense of “community” around the company’s stores and the overall Kith brand is something that Fieg has expertly achieved from a marketing perspective. The retailer’s flagships — especially the Lafayette Street location in Manhattan — commonly attract large lines of tourists and locals waiting to get inside to shop, which is far less of an occurrence these days than it used to be for fashion stores in general.
Fieg’s increasing investment into sports-focused relationships, such as the brand’s Adidas partnership, NFL deal and integration of athletes in Kith runway shows, all serve to inject his company and its products with the star power and fandom that only sports can bring.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for stopping by.
See you next week,
DYM
Curious to see if Nike would find themselves looking to develop a marquee counterpart partnership in the same way we've seen Kith/Adidas + ALD/NB grow over the years. Hard to imagine a similar vision with OW, Stussy, Supreme or any of the boutique partners. Assuming there was a brand with enough cultural value that aligned well enough to create a long-term strategic partnership, can't see Nike making waves in its current state.
Nice breakdown. Denim next to jerseys and the updated indoor silhouettes (Predator Sala, Supernova) make this feel wearable beyond match days. Clean move for fall.