Image via Foot Locker
Luxury sportswear. It’s a category that Don C has cultivated and operated in for the past decade. Snapback hats with python skin brims, basketball shorts with premium grade hardware, and quilted leather Air Jordan 2s made to resemble Chanel bags are just some of the concepts he’s presented to the masses.
For years, the products have remained popular and recognizable, but were not always attainable for everyone. A Just Don snapback or pair of shorts, for example, cost between $400 and $450. Don recalls being self-conscious about the exorbitant price points when speaking to people from the Chicago neighborhood where he grew up.
“When I go back around and everybody’s saying they love my brand and love what I’m doing, but they can’t consume it, that does bother me,” he tells Complex.
But now, Don C is providing a solution to his fans who may not have the disposable income to spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of mesh shorts: a line of apparel called All City. The new brand, which launched on Nov. 10, is sold exclusively through Foot Locker’s online platform and various brick-and-mortar locations across the country. The first collection consists of elevated, ‘90s-inspired sportswear pieces that Just Don’s known for such as track pants with branded seams, shorts with giant embroidered logos, satin varsity jackets, or graphic knit sweaters showing off the Chicago skyline. Details like jacquard collars on T-shirts are a nod to his high school wardrobe. The pieces are familiar to Don C’s supporters, but they are more affordable as nothing retails above $195. But Don C wants everyone to know that more affordable pricing doesn’t mean cheaper quality.
“I did not want to diffuse ideas though. I did not want to water down Just Don. I wanted to come up with a concept that I thought was appropriate at Foot Locker. That’s why I looked at All City being something that’s very community based,” says Don C. “It’s a lot of pillars in All City that are the exact same pillars as Just Don, but there’s some stuff with Just Don that I do differently with All City. Of course it’s all coming from my creation, so I think it falls under my umbrella of ideas and the ecosphere that I bring people in when you come into the Don C world, but All City is really going to stand on its own.”
All City isn’t the only way Don C wants to bring luxury sportswear to the community. During the conversation, he also revealed his plans to open the Fashion Athletics Art Museum (FAAM) in the southside of Chicago in the near future.
“I wanna use my community to inspire and spread the good messaging, and then try to do that in other communities where eventually it’s global,” he says.
We recently sat down with Don C over Zoom to discuss his All City line, his goal of making Just Don into a legacy brand, the impact of his Air Jordan 2 collab from 2015, and more. Check out the full conversation below.
Can you just talk about the All City line and how that opportunity with Foot Locker came to be?
Full props to my boy Richie Cruz and my boy Jason Brown, who I feel like were big advocates of mine in the building that helped push this thing through. I’ve worked for Foot Locker for a number of years and built a relationship with them. I really respect the brand as being like one of the major pillars of sneaker culture. I kind of remind everybody that there’s two big major sneaker brands. We know Nike and Adidas. And then there’s Foot Locker. I feel like those are the three strongest brands in our sneaker community. A huge portion of our community consumes sneakers at Foot Locker. So I really feel like it’s a huge staple in our community that I just want to use as a resource to push out good communications and good product. So that’s sort of how it came together. We’ve been talking and finally built it out, and it’s been about over a year and a half in the making for us to come to this point where it’s now being released. We just want to continue to churn out energy and I want the drops to get better and better, the marketing to get better, and just grow this to be a staple at Foot Locker.
I know you’ve had a handful of one-off projects in the past with Foot Locker. You’ve told stories before that you got your first Jordans at a Foot Locker and stuff like that. Even though you’ve worked with them before, is it still crazy to see these All City displays popping up in different cities at all the malls and stuff?
Man, I’m super hyped about it. It’s very surreal, especially because to me, sometimes life is moving so fast. You don’t take a moment just to reflect on what’s going on because you go to the next meeting or the next thing to do. I was getting a huge positive response from my friends. A bunch of my friends that I hadn’t even talked to in a minute reached out to me and were like, ‘Yo, I’m in Miami, I just saw All City.’ ‘I’m in this city, I just saw it.’ And they were saying how I’ve been getting all positive responses. So I’m overwhelmed with joy because of that, because my friends, they keep it real. I feel like nobody would gas me if they really didn’t like it. Everybody’s been giving me a positive response and been seeing the marketing. So, I want to give Foot Locker applause on that because I’m not in control of that, making sure the message gets out there. They’re doing an amazing job with that. People been saying they’ve been seeing YouTube ads. It’s just been visible everywhere.
The cool thing to me about the All City stuff is that it’s really like a Just Don diffusion line. It’s like what Jerry Lorenzo kind of does with his Essentials line. I’m sure that up to this point there’s been a lot of supporters and fans of yours that might not have been able to afford a snapback or the shorts or whatever from Just Don. Why was it important to really give them that more affordable option now?
I was very self-conscious of that in the neighborhood I’m from in Chicago. When I go back around and everybody’s saying they love my brand and love what I’m doing, but they can’t consume it. That does bother me. I did not want to diffuse ideas though. I did not want to water down Just Don. I wanted to come up with a concept that I thought was appropriate at Foot Locker. That’s why I looked at All City being something that’s very community based. It’s a lot of pillars in All City that are the exact same pillars as Just Don, but there’s some stuff with Just Don that I do differently with All City. Of course it’s all coming from my creation, so I think it falls under my umbrella of ideas and the ecosphere that I bring people in when you come into the Don C world, but All City is really going to stand on its own. It’s going to be messaging something that I think is a little different than Just Don’s exact messages, but it is quality and it is sports-based.
I’ve heard you say a handful of times that you want to build a legacy brand in the way that Ralph [Lauren] or Tommy [Hilfiger] or some of those big names have. The All City stuff is available to a wider audience than some of the stuff you’ve done in the past. Do you consider this to be that next step for you in eventually achieving that?
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the Foot Locker marketing, letting people know about All City. I think All City is going to be an entry point and a lot of people’s first time of knowing Just Don. I walked into some of the stores, and I thought people would know the Just Don brand from the Jordans and the Legacy 312s, which most people do. But I think for some reason more people know my name, Don C. So that was the feedback I’ve been getting from a lot of Foot Lockers. They’ve been having to communicate to some consumers that the brand is something from me. It doesn’t connect right away when you see ‘Just Don All City’ in Foot Locker. And I love that. People are interested, so they’re asking questions and they want to know. We’re just going to make sure our communication is tightened up even more. So people are getting the message.
I have to ask you this as a big sports fan myself. As a designer, you always reference certain teams or pull references from certain moments throughout sports history. So I’m curious, is there either a player, or an era of a team, or a moment in sports history that you want to channel in product at some point that you haven’t gotten to yet?
I love that you asked that question. That was an amazing question because it’s not an actual team or anything, but it’s an era. So what I’m trying to channel is my high school years. So it’s the early to mid ‘90s. That’s what I’m trying to channel. Like the T-shirts that we did, we had a jacquard rib on the neck. That reference comes from like these NCAA shirts that I used to collect back when I was in high school. I had like the Texas, the UNC, the UNLV, the Georgetown, the Miami, and they used to have that jacquard neck rib. I just thought that was an aspect of like real craftsmanship on an item that was made for urban use. That’s why I was really attracted to it. Like this knit sweater [points at sweater he is wearing], this my favorite piece in the first drop because the knit sweater is like, you know, Cosby Show. That’s what I come from. That’s my reference from that era. We wore knits. I feel like today, everybody wears sweatshirts. I want to take it back to the knits where it’s a little more elevated. I feel like it’s an elevated version of a hoodie or a sweatshirt. So, you know that’s sort of what I was trying to channel. I’m trying to take it back to my high school years. Kenwood Academy. Southside, Chicago.
Another project that you unveiled in recent months is through Just Don, but I know you did your own shoe, and that was a really big thing for you. What do you see as that next evolution of your brand? Is it a Just Don vegan food spot? Is it Just Don cars?
I love that. I think people see where I’m going with it. So the pillars of Just Don are quality, sport, style, and heritage. That’s what I’m trying to do when I hit Just Don. Now, I’m trying to expand that when it comes to the All City brand. I’m trying to expand it to more youth. So I think I’m going to dial in maybe with tech because I think the youth are into technology. Now, the other lane that Just Don is about to hit is wellness. I want to be big into wellness. And I want that to eventually come across in the apparel where we figure out more sustainable practices when producing the products. So, we’re just thinking about the world, always thinking about everybody else. Empathy is something that I really want to improve on, how I practice it, because if I’m thinking about others it allows me to make these decisions that make the world a better place. So, wellness is a pocket that I really want to go into. You know, I juice every day. I was gardening until I moved back to Chicago, but I’m about to figure that out in the Chi.
That’s where I want to go with it. That’s where I’m going. It’s more wellness, messaging good energy, and I’m opening a museum in Chicago. I’ll leak it with you. The museum acronym is FAAM, the FAAM. It’s the Fashion Athletics Art Museum. So, the Fashion Athletics Art Museum is going to be on the Southside of Chicago. The city is behind me. They blessed me with a dope building that’s ill. It was an old bank on the Southside. So that’s what I want to do. I wanna use my community to inspire and spread the good messaging, and then try to do that in other communities where eventually it’s global. For sure.
I have to get a sneaker question in here with you. Now, I wanted to ask you about the Air Jordan 2 because you did your versions in 2015 when, to be honest, no one cared about the Air Jordan 2. You sort of gave it life at that point. Now, you see Virgil just did his and Union is doing them next year. Jordan Brand is putting this attention on that shoe, but you and Vashtie a few years prior to you were like the first big collabs on that shoe. So, what do you think about seeing the 2 get that attention now?
It deserves it. It is such an overlooked silhouette, and the 8s are, too. So I’m gonna just throw that out there since they are already running with the 2s, the 8s. We need more energy on the 8s because of them straps. I’ll kill them. Or I’ll give [Jordan Brand] the design and [they] give it to somebody else and tell everybody they did it, cool. I’m with it. So, I’m telling you, I love the 2s. For me, the Air Jordan 2 was the entry point of luxury sportswear. “Luxury sportswear” is a category that I like to champion inventing because I remember when I first put the hashtag ‘luxury sportswear’ on Instagram. No posts. No one had that hashtag. The only reason I abandoned it is because I couldn’t trademark the term. I went to try to trademark ‘luxury sportswear,’ and the US trademark office was saying it was too generic. But then I started putting the hashtag ‘luxury sportswear’ when I was doing the hats. I’m going to do a luxury brand that’s a sports brand. And so I kept doing it, kept doing it. I started noticing other brands start using ‘luxury sportswear.’ So that’s the only reason I kind of abandoned it because now it gets clouded. Like now if I say ‘luxury sportswear,’ it’s about 800 brands that say they do luxury sportswear. So now I just represent it as Just Don and hopefully people understand that’s a synonym for luxury sportswear.
I think sneakers are the foundation of our culture. So everything comes from that. So I was privileged to be able to do the 2. I love the 2. I’m glad it’s getting the attention it deserves now. I hope Jordan Brand allows me to do some more models. I would love that. When I did the Jordan 2, they positioned it like, ‘Hey Don C, we need some help with this model. If this gains traction, you’ll be able to do anything you want to in the building.’ I believe it gained traction, but I believe that the company didn’t live up to their end of that gentleman’s agreement. So it’s all love, you know. I’ll just say, I love brands and I love what brands represent, but sometimes you get imperfect people that work for these brands that make things difficult and they have agendas or they are not with the alignment of the brand. Sometimes people get out your way. Sometimes they still be there. You gotta figure it out regardless. So, I love Jordan Brand. I love the brand and I love Michael Jordan. If you ever hear me say anything negative or funny style about it, it’s never about the brand or Michael Jordan. It’s about fake people that might be employees.