Kith partners with Russell Athletic to present a 96-style collection that combines Kith’s penchant for quality with Russell’s iconic heritage. Ronnie Fieg’s nostalgia of retro athletics and love for quality fleece set the foundation for Kith to work with Russell, the originators of the first sweatshirt. Kith developed a special 14oz cotton fleece that was custom-milled in the US to properly achieve a high quality OG feel. Four of Russell’s original silhouettes are used as the base for the collection – a hoodie, crewneck, tee shirt, and short. Paying homage to vintage Russell catalogs where customers would be shown a large grid of color swatches that each style was available in, Kith has designed each silhouette in four shades of six different colors. These colors include Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Black, each of which features overdyed, OG, pastel, and vintage shades, thus telling a robust color story. Each style is also limited to only 100 units.
To tell this color story, Kith has given each of its four flagship stores a different color shade category reminiscent of their respective locations. The SoHo color story is the darkest of the four and features a very unique reverse patchwork design, as well as a new co-branded variation of Russell’s iconic R patch. Brooklyn receives the OG colors, a nod to Brooklyn being Kith’s original store and the colors being Russell’s original palette. The pastel colors are designed for Miami and feature special chenille and flocked logo applications. The fourth color story nods to Los Angeles being the mecca for vintage shopping, hence why they receive the vintage colorways that feature mild distressing designed to mimic clothing weathered by age. Lastly, to ensure that each color story is represented in New York, Bergdorf Goodman will receive the pastel colorways while Hirshleifers will receive the vintage colorways.
This launch coincides with the opening of Kith’s first international outpost, a completely custom shop-in-shop inside of Selfridges, London’s perennial fashion retailer. To celebrate this opening, Kith London will be the only store to stock the entire collection (outside of Kith.com).
Kith x Russell Athletic releases Friday, April 5th at all Kith shops and at 11AM EST on Kith.com.
Photography: Justin Bridges
Styling: Ronnie Fieg
