I recently got to discuss the latest Under Armour x Ali collection with Glenn Silbert, the Senior Vice President of Men’s Apparel at Under Armour. We spoke briefly about Team UA Next and what the UA slogan “Rule Yourself” meant to him. Check it out and share your thoughts below.
[Noah Goldowitz for WearTesters.com]: So what is the collection exactly, pieces specifically? [Glenn Silbert]: It’s a lot of things. We’ve been doing Ali all year; we’ve been doing work with ABG group on releasing limited edition things around his fights that he won in the past so for right now we’re releasing some Thrilla in Manila product to really pay respect to the event of a generation. But the performance pack launching 11/1 is really a curated assortment of performance product. Our approach was really, like I said on stage, “What would he wear if he was in the gym training today?” How could we make him better? We took some of the core essentials of Under Armour–whether it be our compression leggings or our four way stretch woven shorts or a fitted fourway stretch t-shirt with a ventilated back. If you put all that together as a system for Muhammad Ali, man. [WT]: Would he wear his own face on his shirts? [GS]: Actually a lot of the stuff we’re doing has sayings that’re motivational, what he used to motivate himself. The photo-real stuff really pays respect to him as an athlete. Guys like Canelo, Steph Curry, everybody connects with the guy, whether it’s a little kid like Javon, our new youth next athlete who joined the brand last week. [WT]: How many athletes like him [Javon] are there? [GS]: We had 16,000 applicants and we picked seven. The seven that we picked are going to be the face of Under Armour Youth for the next year. We’ll work with them on ad campaigns around imaging our youth consumer and we really picked him from a cross section of amazing athletes. [WT]: The collection that’s shown here today, is that the whole collection? [GS]: Probably between now and middle of ’16, it’s probably about 50% of what we’re putting out. But the performance stuff, Canelo was representing well with what he was wearing. I think Cam, up on the stage, had a good amount of it on. That is pretty literal to what’s dropping on 11/1. [WT]: Can we talk about those Under Armour Speedform Phenoms, the “Greatest”–when do those come out, November 1 as well? [GS]: Yes. [WT]: And are those going to be limited? [GS]: Yeah those are pretty limited– [WT]: Do you have a number? [GS]: Ehhhh they’ll be out there–bigger than the breadbox. The idea was to do something really special. I was trying to get a pair and I couldn’t even get a pair! We couldn’t get pairs! [WT]: I plan on getting a pair. [GS]: The cool thing is it’s not overtly branded Ali. [WT]: And it has that really nicer inner quote on the collar. [GS]: I know it’s very cool. [WT]: How much of a hand did Ali have in this collection? [GS]: We don’t work directly with Ali, we work with ABG and everything we do goes through Lonnie, his wife. The content, we sent our team down to Louisville and really looked into the archive when we built the line out. Everything that’s in that museum is really blessed by Ali, really representative of his vision for his legacy. So I would say heavily influenced by Ali but not directly by him looking at product. But Lonnie sees everything and her feedback to us, from the very beginning, has been “Wow I didn’t realize it could be this good.” The enthusiasm for the brand, for Ali–it was bound to be a hit. It wasn’t about product it was about what these two brands could do together. [WT]: What does ‘Rule Yourself’ mean to you? [GS]: ‘Rule Yourself’ is the sum of all the parts that define getting prepared for an event, to be better, so rule yourself is the aggregate of–whether you’re a boxer or a runner–all those miles, all the punches you put in– [WT]: But what does it mean to you? [GS]: I’m a runner so it’s about every mile that I run everyday that gets me ready for the next race. I show up on race day and ask myself, “Did I do what it took to be better?” so it hits home. [WT]: Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.
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