Thebe Magugu and Adidas Accomplice with South African Soccer Membership Orlando Pirates

South African designer Thebe Magugu has teamed up with sportswear big Adidas to design the soccer equipment for the Orlando Pirates, a males’s South African crew, within the upcoming 2023-2024 season.

This tie-up marks Magugu’s newest collaboration with Adidas, with whom the designer teamed up final yr, co-designing a tennis assortment that emphasised unisex and inclusive sizing. Since profitable the LVMH Prize 2019, Magugu has collaborated with numerous huge labels, together with Dior, which tapped him to reinterpret the maison’s “New Look”  in October 2022.

The Orlando Pirates sports activities kits will characteristic two on-pitch uniforms with the crew’s signature cranium and bones motif: a conventional black-and-white jersey for house video games and pistachio inexperienced for away video games. Magugu has additionally designed a line of fan attire, together with jerseys, T-shirts and sweatpants that includes his tackle the brand, which will probably be obtainable to buy subsequent week.

“I felt prefer it was essential to listen to the Orlando Pirates story earlier than I started designing,” mentioned Magugu. “A story of perseverance, combating in opposition to the chances to grow to be one of the crucial recognised figureheads in international sports activities.”

An extended-time supporter of the soccer crew, Magugu mentioned he was impressed by its legacy as a membership based by the youngsters of migrant staff who labored in Johannesburg’s gold mines within the Nineteen Thirties. In the present day, Orlando Pirates is likely one of the nation’s oldest soccer golf equipment and has made 11 appearances within the CAF Champions League since FIFA lifted the ban on South African soccer groups because of the Apartheid regime in 1993.

Magugu is hardly the one luxurious designer working with sports activities groups. Forward of the FIFA World Cup in late 2022, Louis Vuitton launched a marketing campaign starring Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. Dior, Zegna and Fendi have designed collections for soccer golf equipment as effectively.

For Magugu, working with Orlando Pirates will give him extra publicity to his goal shopper: on a regular basis South Africans. Earlier this yr, Magugu instructed BoF that he’s stepping again from the worldwide stage and is hoping to develop his enterprise with out neglecting his native shopper.

“It’s fairly ironic however the model is slowly changing into a family identify within the West, however by means of this partnership, many South Africans will probably be listening to concerning the model for the primary time,” mentioned Magugu. This was evidenced by ardent followers who took to Twitter to inquire concerning the Thebe Magugu emblem which is adorned on the again of the T-shirts.

The partnership can even permit Magugu to dip his toe into menswear, a class he plans so as to add to his portfolio in coming years. The designer mentioned he’s hopeful this partnership will lead him to the chance to design a set for a neighborhood girls’s soccer crew. Ultimately, he has his eyes set on the ladies’s nationwide soccer crew which is competing within the FIFA Girls’s World Cup this month.

“Sport, like style, is an unbelievable unifier of individuals” mentioned Magugu. “It’s, nevertheless, a wholly totally different beast. The attain and visibility of soccer is just too engaging to go up, even for luxurious designers.”