Fashionable fan apparel is in the spotlight. There’s still an untapped market for the NFL

By BROOKE SCHULTZ
Associated Press/Report for America

Taylor Swift in January donned a red puffer jacket with boyfriend and Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce’s number for a playoff game. Within a month, that jacket’s designer, Kristin Juszczyk, scored a NFL licensing deal and had more than 1 million followers on Instagram. Her meteoric success story has illustrated the potency of a market for women’s sports apparel that merges fashion and fan culture. It’s also highlighted how hard it is for smaller, independent creators to break into the business — especially Black designers, who popularized and innovated sportswear-as-womenswear two decades ago.