"When you look at old flannel, it's basically a cross-stitch. "First we had to define what our goal was," he says. So how did they do it? Most companies would be too secretive to explain the details of a project like this, but Lineberger agreed to give Uni Watch an unusually good look at UA's creative process. But the quality has improved a lot over the past year or two, allowing the production of something as nuanced as Legend Gray.
Until recently it's been used primarily for loud, gaudy designs (think roller hockey or extreme sports), in part because the process didn't work well for more subtle effects. The key turned out to be a process called sublimation, in which ink is embedded into the fabric instead of printed onto it. We wanted to achieve that look, so we said, 'How can we get this done?'" We have plenty of the old flannels here at the office. "But we wanted to create a road gray fabric to go along with that. "The cream tone is easy enough to create - it's just a colorway," says Lineberger. Legend Gray came about as an offshoot of the cream-colored off-white fabric that many teams have recently been using for their home throwbacks. Jeff Jacobsen/Kansas Athletics Missouri's cool throwback road uniforms are drawing attention from uniform lovers and oppponents alike. It's amazing, because from a distance it looks like my old Little League uniform, or what major league teams wore in the 1960s." "They want to feel it, they want to see what it's all about.
"Very seldom do you have other coaches comment on your uniforms, but each coach we've played has said something about this one," he says. This all might seem like a lot of fuss over a gray fabric, but Missouri baseball coach Tim Jamieson says people have noticed. Although it looks like an old natural-fiber flannel fabric, full of texture and grain and a heathered tone, it's actually UA's standard double-knit polyester embedded with a pattern designed to simulate the look of flannel. In this case, UA has come up with Legend Gray, a new throwback uniform fabric currently being worn for selected road games by Missouri, Texas Tech and Pepperdine. "So anything we can come up with that helps celebrate the heritage of the game while providing something that's performance-driven, that's a good thing." "We're innovation-driven, sure, but we have some real uniform geeks here, myself included," he says. Or maybe it's not so surprising after all, at least according to Ryan Lineberger, senior product manager for UA's on-field group.
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