‘That’s Fire’: The Golden State Warriors’ New Women’s Suffrage-Themed City Edition Jersey

Allison Hueman, the noted Oakland-based artist and muralist, couldn’t believe the email she was reading in January 2021: Would you be interested in designing the City Edition uniform for the Golden State Warriors?

“Wait, are they really asking me to do this?” Hueman remembers thinking. “I remember having to read it several times.”

She finally replied, “Of course.”

Hueman is a fan of the Warriors. She had already collaborated with Stephen Curry into a line of athletic footwear, infusing Under Armor shoes with their signature ultra-colorful spray-paint style. Jen Millet, director of marketing for the Warriors, gave Hueman a directive, they both recall: “Just do it. You have complete creative freedom.”

The Warriors decided that the jersey should highlight and promote the empowerment of women. The team had already changed the name of March from “Women’s History Month” to “Women’s Empowerment Month” and wanted the jersey to match that theme.

“The name ‘Women’s History Month’ struck us as a bit strange,” says Millet. “Like something out of ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ Let’s reframe it.” Team officials found that players enjoyed telling and hearing stories about the women who helped shape them, Millet says.

The #MeToo movement was in full swing. Oakland native Kamala Harris had just been sworn in as Vice President of the United States. The time seemed right for a women’s empowerment-themed T-shirt — and perhaps an artistically adventurous one.

The result is one of the most radical jerseys in NBA history, centered around a photorealistic golden-yellow rose — one of the symbols of the women’s suffrage movement — that stretches from just below the center logo to the edge bottom of the t-shirt.

The largest rose is actually drawn by hand, says Hueman. The smaller one in the center, outlined in yellow gold, arose from a vision that appeared in Hueman’s head while he was conceiving the jersey. “I imagined that the cables of the Bay Bridge had been broken and reattached to form this line art rose,” he says. A smaller version of that rose appears on the belt buckle. The gold trim on the shorts echoes the soaring curves of the bridge.

The blocky font is a nod to Art Deco landmarks in the Bay Area, including the signage at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, says Hueman. Hueman intentionally combined traditionally sharp masculine colors — primarily black — with the images of flowers.

“The color scheme is really masculine, but the content is really feminine,” he says. “I try to find opposing elements that balance each other out. I also didn’t want to do something ‘soft’ because not all women are ‘soft’.”

Along with the jersey launch, the Warriors and Rakuten will donate $25,000 to the Women’s Sports Foundation, the team said.

The Warriors admired how the Los Angeles Lakers put a black snakeskin pattern on the base of one of their 2017-18 jerseys — an homage to Kobe Bryant’s “Black Mamba” nickname, Millet says. (Bryant helped design the shirt, as he told ESPN back then.) The pattern was hard to spot on TV or from a distance. The Warriors wondered if they could do something similar, but with bigger, brighter visuals.

“With the City Edition, you can really go further,” says Millet. “Maybe you fail. Maybe people hate it. It’s a year. Everyone can deal with a year.”

Hueman’s art typically mixes a lot of bright colors, but she decided to go for something simpler and more in keeping with the team’s larger art collection.

“I thought about myself as a Warriors fan and what I would like to buy and wear,” she says. “And I love wearing black.” She knows that the design is different, new. She is waiting for the response from fans today.

“I’m scared, to be honest,” says Hueman. “I know what Warriors fans and sports fans are like — their teams are precious. So, I am touching something that is sacred. There’s a part of me that’s like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m so excited. And there’s another part that’s nervous to see the reaction.”

Even the team is eager to see what the jerseys look like in action at a game, because when you tuck them into your pants — which is a must, ask Chris-Paul — will take some of the larger flowers out of sight.

“Our point was that if you were going to wear it as part of your regular lifestyle, you weren’t going to put it in your pants,” says Millet. (The team explored lifting the flower higher toward the top of the jersey, but ran into issues and regulations about accommodating all the other required information, says Millet.)

Early in the process, Millet and his top deputy asked officials on the basketball operations side if they could pitch the overall concept — a women’s empowerment-themed T-shirt — to the organization’s highest voice. : Stephen Curry.

“We were checking our instincts,” says Millet. “How are people going to feel about this? Are we too much in our own heads about it? Is it relatable? Will the players accept it?”

Millet and his team held a video call with Curry. “He didn’t even blink,” recalls Millet. “It was immediately, ‘Yeah, I like it. It’s great.'”

Hueman went to work. He liked the idea of ​​drawing inspiration from the Great Seal of the State of California, one of the earliest symbols of statehood with an armored Minerva – the Roman goddess of wisdom.

“She’s literally the first warrior of the golden state, if you think about it that way,” says Hueman.

Other mockups featured shapes that intersected to form the sign of Venus and a color palette based on famous images of Rosie the Riveter from American recruiting drives during World War II, says Hueman.

Millet and his team eventually pitched three proposals to Curry. “When you show players creative work, you’re always worried that they’ll think you did it — that they’re not going to come clean with you — like, will your feelings be hurt?” Millett says. “We are honest with [Curry]: ‘You have to tell us’. And it was honest.”

Curry was unconcerned about the design based on state seals, says Millet. The organization could reconsider again in the future, although there was some concern that the shield itself was too visually charged and too literal, says Millet.

Curry was then shown the photorealistic floral design. “‘That’s fire,'” Curry told them, according to Millet. (Curry confirmed these details through a team spokesperson.)

“Now we had to go back to the commercial side to sell it,” says Millet. “And they said, ‘I don’t know.’ But that was part of the reason we went to Stephen first. It brings credibility. You can walk in and say, ‘This is the design. We understand it’s aggressive. But we’ve already shared it with Stephen and he likes it.'”

Like most organizations, the Warriors have traditionalists when it comes to uniforms, Millet says. “They say, ‘Why can’t we have two uniforms?’ And I get it.” That players have turned the halls of NBA arenas into pre-game fashion shows has gone some way to helping the creative staff persuade those of the old school with more daring and even flashy designs.

“This is what players wear when they go into games,” says Millet. “Let’s find them where they are.”

For good measure, a design draft relegated the flower pattern to the sides of the jerseys — and the black faded into a gray meant to evoke San Francisco fog:

The line art rose in that version also had roots.

But that eraser looks like a standard NBA jersey. It’s nice, but there’s nothing shocking or unexpected about it — nothing that screams: wow this is an event. Even this jersey’s detractors — and there will be some, there always are — will acknowledge its uniqueness.

Hueman has important pieces all over the country, but he can’t remember ever feeling that way before an opening, he says.

“This is possibly the biggest thing I’ve ever done,” says Hueman. “I get butterflies every time I think about it.”

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‘That’s Fire’: The Golden State Warriors’ New Women’s Suffrage-Themed City Edition Jersey