Sports was in his blood before fashion: Jerry Lorenzo’s father, Jerry Manuel, was a baseball player, coach, and manager for the Chicago White Sox and the New York Mets. The young Lorenzo played basketball and baseball. But it didn’t take long for Lorenzo to become fore fascinated by the fits than the plays. “My dad makes fun of me,” he recalled, laughing, the day after being honored by the Fashion Scholarship Fund in New York City. ‘He’s like, ‘Your uniform and the way you run on the field is probably the best in the game -but you have no game.’ “My uniform and my jog running out to the field were always the freshest. I was more worried about swag, you know what I mean?”
That fashion fixation paid off. Lorenzo landed a job at the intersection of sports and style, managing the image of legendary LA Dodgers outfielder Matt Kemp. Not long after, in 2013, when he was 36 years old, Lorenzo founded the label Fear of God. It took $14,000 in startup capital, plus a unique perspective shaped by Lorenzo’s understanding of casual American ’90s sports culture, with its defining, slouchy silhouette. In a little over a decade, Fear of God became one of the era’s clearest and most consistent voices in modern American fashion.
“I don’t ever remember a time where sport and fashion haven’t been connected,” he said. “I grew up in the ’90s and our sports heroes were fashion icons. To me, with what you saw on the court in terms of the elegance and effortlessness of these athletes and how they looked off the court, there wasn’t a separation. Michael Jordan in his
sports uniform and in his suit didn’t change. There’s an emotion and a spirit that an athlete brings to fashion that is undeniably cool. There’s always been a swag to an athlete. It’s this natural presence. It’s this natural way they carry themselves.”
Pillars of Fear of God
Lorenzo applies his energy for the élan of sports stars to his three-part Fear of God brand: Fear of God main line, Essentials and Athletics. If Fear of God is luxury and Essentials is leisure, then Athletics is raw functionality—the gear players perform in. But whether it’s tailoring, sweats or sneakers, there’s always a sports influence, along with a through line of generosity in cut, restraint in palette and a quiet sense of purpose. “The spirit doesn’t change. The proportion, the fit, the intention, all of those things are very much the same across the board, across all three areas, whether it’s our collaboration with Adidas, what we’re doing with Essentials and what we’re doing with our main line,” he said. “And for most of our Essentials or Adidas campaigns, we’re styling it with all three pillars. They all work together and they’re all in the same space emotionally.”
Lorenzo’s heroes are rarely high-fashion figures (except, perhaps, Giorgio Armani), but instead, sports’ most stylish: Jordan, Allen Iverson, Deion Sanders, Björn Borg, David Beckham, Andre Agassi and Anthony Edwards. Which takes us to the frontier of style: tunnel walks. Is he a fan? As the public and brand appetite for them seems to grow, Lorenzo is actually losing interest. “Today, it’s a little forced. It’s a little show before the game, which my son likes. Maybe I’m just aged out of it, but I look at somebody like Anthony Edwards’ [Minnesota Timberwolves] style more than anyone.He comes to the court with sweats on and flip-flops, like, ‘I’m coming to play. I’m not putting all this thought and energy into how I look for these pictures.’ To me, that speaks to the effortless spirit of the late ’90s: ‘I’m just coming to work.’ That, to me, was cool.”
He also appreciates former Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce. “I don’t know if you remember the two brothers playing in the Super Bowl, and Travis [Kelce] had the suit and the hair, and his brother came in with cut-off jean shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt and a beard? It was just like, ‘I’m coming.’ That was, to me, the freshest look of all. It was so cool. For me, what’s cool is honest, and I feel like as soon as something feels dishonest or too much effort, it loses a little bit of the cool.”
