Fashion Stores and NFL Players Work Side-By-Side in 2025
New York's luxury boutique ESSX is showing the others how its done when it comes to sports-fashion marketing. Here's a short Easter newsletter analysis.
Hi friends! Welcome back to another edition of SportsVerse, your favourite newsletter at the intersection of sports, fashion, culture and business. Powered by OffBall.
Today's newsletter is a short one because it’s Easter (Happy Easter!) and because I have some time off at the beginning of this week. I hope everyone had a great long weekend!
ESSX, the fashion cool kid store in New York’s Lower East Side, has been a big hit since it opened its doors in 2023.
A large part of its success to date has been how its founder, Laura Baker, has organically aligned the store, its marketing and the brands it stocks with athletes and the world of sports in general.
The latest example of this came last week, when ESSX released its SS25 campaign, which was shot not by your usual fashion photographer, or even by an in-house member of staff at the store, but by NFL player Ogbo Okoronkwo. Okoronkwo was also the creative director of the campaign video itself, which features his teammate Grant Delpit.
It’s not the first time ESSX has worked with Okoronkwo, aka Obeezy, in this way. The store previously hosted his debut solo photography exhibition a couple years back.
At a time when many fashion brands, retailers and media publications are suddenly trying to figure out how to shoehorn sports into their content and output, this subtle move showed how ESSX was yet again ahead of the game when it comes to its relationship with athletes.
With enough money or clout any brand or store can pay an athlete to be in a campaign. But getting Obeezy to play a starring role behind the camera was a smart play which revealed the extent of the trust and collaboration between the NFL player and the store, which counts him and a long list of other high-profile athletes among its VIP clientele.
Meanwhile, ESSX has also proven itself to be a savvy marketer when it comes to promoting the intersection of sports and the high-end brands in its roster.
Last week it posted a catchy reel on Instagram featuring a series of reworked football jerseys by American designer Conner Ives which were on sale in store. The jerseys were shot in a catchy video starring Hannah Maqsudi — an ESSX employee and former D1 college soccer player — juggling a football in various different looks including a vintage 2005/06 Arsenal burgundy home kit and an AC Milan dress.
This is how fashion businesses can engage with sport and athletes and not make it cringe. It reminds me of the simplicity and subtlety of Aimé Leon Dore’s SS24 campaign which was a celebration of London’s cultural heritage and featured Arsenal’s Declan Rice and Leah Williamson as regular members of the cast alongside other creatives from the city, without putting them front and centre in the shoot and shouting from the rooftops about how this was a fashion and sports crossover.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
Until next time!
DYM
Didn’t know about this store! Thanks for pointing it out!