Website design <\/p>\n
As a kid growing up in Seattle, Coco Cultr founder Jesa Chiro remembers thinking that as a little sister, “your older brother just seems like the coolest person in the world,\u201d she says. \u201cAt least to me, anyway.\u201d Her older brother, Munya, who she describes as a \u201cbasketball fanatic,” collected everything basketball-related he could: jerseys, NBA 2K games, bobbleheads, and whatever memorabilia he could get his hands on. Some of Chiro\u2019s earliest memories include waking up early to go to Munya\u2019s basketball camps, watching games together, and tagging along on trips to Goodwill with him in search of jerseys. The Chiro family’s team was the Seattle SuperSonics until it was sold in 2006, later moving to Oklahoma City and rebranding as the Thunder in 2008.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Coco Cultr founder Jesa Chiro as child, in Seattle with her basketball-enthused father and brother.<\/p>\n <\/span>Photo: Courtesy Jesa Chiro<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n <\/p>\n Chiro with her WNBA Seattle Storm merch.<\/p>\n <\/span>Photo: Courtesy of Jesa Chiro<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n While Chiro never had the innate athletic ability or handles for basketball, she did go through a brief obsessed-with-Lauren-Jackson-and-Sue-Bird phase. (Her brother had the Sonics, she had the Seattle Storm.) After receiving a wristband from Bird at age 11, she claims, \u201cI never washed it.\u201d Years later, she\u2019d find her place in the sport not by way of her brother or as a WNBA fan, but through fashion.<\/p>\n “Why is there not any cute sportswear for women?” asks Chiro, who sits on a patio over Zoom. While that question might seem outdated in light of countless collaborations, capsule collections, and brands like Playa Society reshaping WNBA merch, Chiro called out the gap early on. When the Sonics left her hometown, the cultural and emotional pull of sports memorabilia was palpable, inspiring her to stockpile and rework jerseys. Chiro also cites Xuly.B\u00ebt\u2019s spring 1995 collaboration with Puma\u2014which saw deadstock soccer jerseys reimagined as dresses\u2014as an early Coco Cultr influence. \u201cIn an interview, [Xuly.B\u00ebt designer] Lamine Badian Kouyat\u00e9 said, \u2018Why not use something that would go to waste and make something new and beautiful?\u2019 That really stuck with me. It captures how I approach Coco.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Sophie Hur<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Chiro founded Coco Cultr during the height of pandemic lockdown, while studying at Western Washington University. After graduation she moved to New York, and came across the aforementioned Xuly.B\u00ebt fashion show on YouTube one day. Inspired, Chiro went to L Train Vintage near her apartment and picked up an old Philadelphia 76ers Hardwood Classics jersey. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what I was going to make,\u201d she says. \u201cI just started cutting and sewing, no pattern, no plan.\u201d At the time, Chiro was working retail at Lower East Side vintage store Procell. She wore her custom mini jersey dress, with the word \u201cSixers\u201d across the front, to her shift the next day. Her boss clocked it immediately: \u201cThat\u2019s really sick,\u201d he said. \u201cDo you have more? We should be carrying this.\u201d And they did, becoming the first store to place an order with the brand; Procell still carries Coco Cultr today.<\/p>\n The sustainable label made a name for itself online with upcycled, reworked vintage pieces: two-piece sets, bikinis, and, most notably, the vintage jersey dresses. Think: A-line cut, body-conscious fit, mid-thigh hem dresses with a heavy emphasis on NBA team logos. The rarer the jersey, the more excited Chiro is to work with it. Her signature silhouette has caught the attention of the sports and streetwear industries\u2014from celebrity stylists and WNBA teams that have gifted her jerseys to reimagine, to brands like Nike and Supreme that have tapped her for special projects.<\/p>\n Photo: Liv Solomon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Chiro calls herself a \u201cdigger\u201d when it comes to seeking out vintage jerseys. \u201cIt\u2019s fun for me to dive into what makes something rare,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat was happening at the time? Why this colorway? That\u2019s the part I love.\u201d These days, though, with high demand, she has rules: no Michael Jordan Bulls jerseys (too common) and deadstock Ray Allen Sonics jerseys are a priority, as are any of Kobe Bryant\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cI try to find jerseys that are actually in good condition, which is hard,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I especially love the weird ones: bootlegs, or basketball jerseys that aren\u2019t even from real teams.\u201d One of her best-sellers? A pink-and-silver \u201cNew York\u201d jersey she cut into a two-piece. It wasn\u2019t licensed, but that didn\u2019t matter; it sold out as soon as she put it on her site.<\/p>\n Photo: Liv Solomon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n Today, Chiro can\u2019t rely on thrift stores the way she used to. Her orders and collections require hyper-specific pieces. Instead, she takes multiple trips to different vendors, swap meets, flea markets, and doomscrolls online, of course. But with flea market trips and collector meetups also comes a bit of anxiety, all in the name of transparency. \u201cWith one of the vendors, I was buying all of these sick, pristine, and rare Sonic jerseys, but I had to say, \u2018I might be cutting them and I want to let you know that,\u2019\u201d she says. To Chiro\u2019s surprise, he responded, \u201cThat’s so sick, you\u2019re giving these jerseys a new life and I love that.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Like the sports world itself, memorabilia collecting remains largely male-dominated, something Chiro understood going in. \u201cI think the sportswear world, basketball world, and streetwear world is male-dominated,\u201d she says, \u201cbut it feels like right now there\u2019s a push to try to get more women into the spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Sophie Hur<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n A self-proclaimed \u201cgirly-girl,\u201d Chiro is drawn to the tension between sports and style\u2014what athletes are wearing, how they\u2019re wearing it, and who designed it. She\u2019s especially drawn to feminine silhouettes, which, save for the Y2K-era jersey dresses and side-tie tanks, have been largely missing from the basketball merch world. \u201cThere were so many jerseys for men, and the ones available for women felt like they were not feminine,\u201d she says. \u201cI want to take something from a man\u2019s world and make it totally feminine. I want to carve out a space for me and my people to be in this world.\u201d With her short A-line dresses, marked by double front pockets\u2014and sometimes asymmetrical necklines\u2014she\u2019s doing just that. Long term, she envisions a bigger play: partnering with a WNBA team or an arena to sell her reworked jerseys during games.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photo: Liv Solomon<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n While one-of-one orders are the foundation of Coco Cultr\u2014\u201cit\u2019s fun to create [them] for the customer because [they\u2019re] special to each person, like little art pieces,\u201d Chiro says\u2014they\u2019re increasingly challenging to fulfill. Case in point: Angel Reese\u2019s team recently reached out, asking if Chiro could turn a custom jersey dress around in a day. \u201cI was like, \u2018I don\u2019t even have the jersey yet!,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Alongside Reese, Chiro dreams of seeing Rihanna in one of her dresses. These are women who, to her, embody what she calls the \u201cCoco girl.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cA Coco girl is someone who creates her own world, and leads in her own life,\u201d she says. \u201cI think of anyone who\u2019s true to themselves, and does what they want to do, that\u2019s a Coco girl.\u201d<\/p>\n Website design As a kid growing up in Seattle, Coco Cultr founder Jesa Chiro remembers thinking that as a little<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7282,"featured_media":12831,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1166],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7282"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usaontheweb.com\/clone1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}