California Apparel News

Professional e-sports competition over video games such as Fortnite is hitting the big time. It attracts investments from owners of major-league sports teams; competitions are viewed by millions of people across the globe; and for the Los Angeles–based e-sports team FaZe Clan, fashion is becoming a big deal.

On Dec. 10, the team’s website, FaZeClan.com, released a capsule collection with athletic and sportswear brand Champion, an official partner of the team. One of the pieces in the collection is the $120 Black Ops hoodie, which features a special reflective fabric. Also featured is a unique mash-up of the logos of the FaZe Clan team and the Champion brand.

Along with the Champion collaboration, the company will also release a women’s line inspired by FaZe Clan’s first female player, Soleil “Ewok” Wheeler, that will feature tees and a purple Champion hoodie bearing sign-language designs honoring Wheeler’s status as a deaf person.

The team has also been receiving attention from the hip-hop world. Hip-hop star Offset, born Kiari Kendrell Cephus, is releasing a capsule collection with FaZe Clan on Dec. 17. Offset plays on the team and also is an investor in FaZe Clan. Another hip-hop star, Lil Yachty, born Miles Parks McCollum, also serves as an investor. Philadelphia 76ers point guard Ben Simmons also has played with the e-sports team.

The capsule collections will not only be sold on the team’s website but will also be sold at the team’s pop-up shop, called FaZe Arcade, which opened at 7312 Melrose Ave. in Hollywood in November and will run until Dec. 18.

Playing video games may be a workout only for the mind and a player’s fingers, but clothes with an active and performance edge are big attractions on the FaZe Clan site, said Greg Selkoe, FaZe Clan’s president and a partner in the team. Hoodies, sweats, baseball caps, plus basketball- and hockey-style jerseys are a big part of streetwear, which has a heavy influence on e-sports and increasingly fashion. Influential European fashion houses from Louis Vuitton to Balmain have produced streetwear lines and collaborations.

Selkoe forecasted that FaZe Clan will have earned $10 million from its active/street/fashion merchandise in 2019. The entire FaZe Clan company is forecasted to earn $35 million in revenue in 2019. Selkoe also forecasted that e-sports will become much more influential. “It is the future of fashion,” he said, “just like the way skateboarding and hip-hop changed the landscape of fashion.”

Selkoe was the founder of the digital streetwear emporium Karmaloop, which he left in 2015. He started a digital market and content platform, Wanderset, in January 2017. He has served as FaZe Clan’s president since December 2017. One of the people working on FaZe Clan’s merchandise program is Aaron Levant, the founder of the Agenda trade show and the founder and chief executive officer of the e-commerce and content platform NTWRK.

Currently there is no specific e-sports look, Levant said. “Kids will dress in whatever feels authentic to their personal style. It will look like streetwear and action-sports styles. These kids are defining themselves with what they are passionate about, but it’s not like these clothes are functional,” he said.

But e-sports fans seem to seek out clothes with an active edge. In November, FaZe Clan released a capsule collection of tees, hoodies and track suits with the Italian brand Kappa. In September, it released caps made in collaboration with the New Era brand. The baseball caps feature the FaZe Clan logo of an “F,” which was designed by team co-founder Tommy Oliveira.

While other e-sports teams such as Seattle’s Evil Geniuses and New York’s G2 Esports sell merchandise, Selkoe said that fashion was the focus of FaZe Clan to expand into new categories of the business. “We’re a pop-gaming collective with an e-sports division. We’re a gaming lifestyle, which goes to fashion. It is a huge piece of what we are doing,” Selkoe said.

FaZe Clan was founded in Boston in 2010.The team moved to the Los Angeles area in 2016. Currently much of the team lives in a mansion in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Hills area. There, 15 players work with content creators to make videos and other content for social media such as its @fazeclan profile on Instagram and its YouTube channel.

The team might do other bricks-and-mortar pop-ups in the future, Selkoe said. More fashion is definitely in the group’s future, said Lee Trink, FaZe Clan’s chief executive officer and a former Capitol Records president. “We will continue to go where no team has gone before, expanding our long-standing relationship with Champion and the many player lines and projects like Kappa and others,” Trink said.

Photos courtesy of FaZe Clan