Fear of God and Jerry Lorenzo, the Long T-Shirt That Built a Label

The first thing people noticed was the length. Fear of God's early T-shirts ran extra long, and that was enough for Big Sean's stylist to start paying attention. Kanye West saw the same shirts, and a few weeks later he called Jerry Lorenzo. Lorenzo traveled to Atlantic City to meet him, and the meeting turned into work on West's collaboration with the French label A.P.C.

It is a very 2010s origin story. One garment, cut a little differently, travels from a stylist to a superstar and becomes a brand.

The ballplayer's son

Lorenzo was born Jerry Lorenzo Manuel Jr. on October 5, 1977, in Sacramento, California. His father is Jerry Manuel, the former major league player, coach and manager, and Lorenzo spent much of his childhood moving with his father's baseball jobs. He earned a bachelor's degree at Florida A&M and an MBA at Loyola University Chicago, working part time in the sales department at Diesel while he studied.

The early career looked nothing like fashion. He worked on corporate sponsorships for the Los Angeles Dodgers and at a sports marketing agency. In 2008 he began promoting parties in Los Angeles, and those nights drew people like Virgil Abloh, Pusha T and Kid Cudi. The same year he started managing the outfielder Matt Kemp, with a focus on Kemp's image and styling.

Baseball never left the work. Lorenzo's seventh Fear of God collection paid tribute to the Negro Leagues, with pieces that drew on his father's decades in the game.

Fourteen thousand dollars

Lorenzo started Fear of God with a budget of $14,000 and no formal fashion training. The name comes from his Christian faith, which he has said inspired it.

The influences were clear from the start. Kanye West, whose own move into fashion was happening in parallel. Kurt Cobain, for the flannel and the worn-in denim. Allen Iverson, for the way he made basketball style feel personal. And Rick Owens, whose Dunks sneakers Lorenzo bought in 2006, a purchase that showed him a basketball shoe could live in the luxury world. Put those together and you get the Fear of God look. Oversized, layered, washed-out colors, very expensive fabric made to feel like something you had owned for ten years.

It was a California answer to the downtown New York streetwear Supreme had defined, slower and softer, and it suits the Los Angeles that runs through our Los Angeles Fairfax Avenue guide.

On tour with Bieber

The broadest exposure came from music. For Justin Bieber's Purpose World Tour in 2016, Lorenzo designed five custom stage looks and helped design the tour merchandise. The merch drew on Cobain's wardrobe, graphic T-shirts, flannel overshirts and denim, and it helped make tour merch look like real clothing. It sits in a long line of musicians shaping menswear, traced in our history of hip-hop and menswear.

Essentials, Vans and Nike

The sneakers came next. In 2017 Lorenzo reworked the Vans Era 95 with an all-over print. In 2018 Nike released his signature Air Fear of God 1, a basketball shoe built with the same lux casual attitude as the clothes. The timing was perfect. Virgil Abloh's The Ten had just shown that a designer's name on a Nike could move the whole market, and the Air Fear of God 1 landed in that window.

Also in 2018 he launched Essentials, a subsidiary line that Vogue described as a competitively priced sister label. Essentials is where most people met the brand, usually in a hoodie or a plain tee, and its staples sit neatly beside the classics in our hoodie history. It was a smart split. The main collection stayed rare and expensive. Essentials took the silhouette to everyone else.

The Adidas chapter

In 2020 Lorenzo moved on from Nike and became Global Head of Adidas Basketball, an unusual job for someone who had come up through T-shirts and tour merch. It was also a logical one for a ballplayer's son who had spent a decade proving that basketball, faith and Los Angeles could share a wardrobe.

The move changed the shape of the business. A label that started with one oversized tee now worked on three levels, the main collection at the top, Essentials in the middle and a sportswear partnership with one of the two biggest names in athletic footwear. Few independent American designers of his generation have had that kind of reach, and fewer still got there without a fashion school on the résumé. Lorenzo's route ran through a baseball clubhouse, a business school and a nightclub door instead.

For more, read Jerry Lorenzo's Wikipedia entry, explore our streetwear and luxury fashion hubs, or head back to the culture section.

The T-shirts still run a little long. That was the first idea, and it is still the one you notice.