Kith founder and CEO Ronnie Fieg has scored a new title: creative director of the New York Knicks.
The pro basketball team made the announcement via Instagram last week and celebrated it on Friday with a Kith Night at Madison Square Garden during its game with the Detroit Pistons when it debuted the Kith-designed 2022-2023 City Edition uniforms that are inspired by the team’s garb from the 1998-1998 season and a new court that was also created by Fieg and his design team.
Although Daniel Arsham was the first to be named creative director of an NBA team when he joined the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2020, this is the first time the Knicks have appointed one. According to the Kith website, “This new role will see Fieg take on new responsibilities with the team and will focus on building a community around an international brand. He will also develop an in-house line of products and oversee extenuating creative around the team.”
Footwear veteran Fieg founded Kith as a streetwear line in 2011. It has since mushroomed into a retail empire with a multibrand freestanding store each in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Miami, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Aspen, Paris and Tokyo. It also has a shop-in-shop at Bergdorf Goodman in New York, Hirshleifers on Long Island and Selfridges in London as well as a kids’ store in New York’s Greenwich Village.
An avid fan of the Knicks for more than three decades, Fieg, a Queens, N.Y. native, has worked with the team before. Their partnership began in 2020 with a collaborative apparel collection and his first time designing the team’s City Edition uniform. In 2021, another collection was released and Fieg designed a new City Edition uniform, a new court at Madison Square Garden and refurbished a playground court in Queens.
The latest Kith for New York Knicks adult and kids’ collection was released at a pop-up store at the arena on Friday and hit Kith stores, kith.com and the Kith app the following day. It consists of wool coach’s jackets, satin bombers, a leather varsity jacket, hoodies, graphic tees, knit shorts and cardigans, caps, beanies and other items such as coasters and a $3,000 gold and diamond pendant made by Greg Yuna. Apparel prices range from $50 for kids’ headwear to $895 for the leather jacket. A few items have already sold out.
This year’s collection’s campaign is fronted by rappers Raekwon and Ghostface Killah.
At Friday’s game, which the Knicks won 121-112, each fan was given a copy of Kith for Slam Commemorative Knicks Magazine and a few tees from the collection were launched into the stands as prizes.
Fieg is not the only fashion designer working with the NBA this season. Just last month Tommy Hilfiger released retro-style basketball jerseys with team logos.