Bears partner with Acid FC, Mitchell & Ness for London merch collection

Cowburn designed the merchandise with the goal of bringing soccer culture and design sensibility to American football while understanding how stylistically different the two uniforms are.

His first thought was: “If the Bears were doing a soccer jersey, what would that look like?” It was also important for Cowburn to push the boundaries of what was possible with the Bears logo. In any design process, he wants to create something original without losing sight of the brand. Working with the classic navy and orange color scheme also allowed him to create a design that can be worn casually or during a night out.

“When you look at the collection, the design of the Bear head is not being broken — it’s just being repeated in a new way,” Cowburn said. “That’s always my challenge to myself is, ‘how can you take something that people recognize and make them see it differently and see it on a number of different levels?’ So I want somebody to see the products, and go, ‘this is cool.’ Then as they get closer, they’re seeing more levels to what is actually there, because I think being a fan is all about understanding and having a really deep knowledge to this stuff. So I feel like the design needs to follow that same process.”

Cowburn’s favorite piece of collection is the jacket, which features the Acid FC logo on the front and the repeated Bear head design on the lining.

“For me, working with Mitchell & Ness was also a big deal because they do the nostalgia pieces really, really well,” Cowburn said. “They’re really well made and they’re very high quality. To have that bomber jacket that I feel is such a part of American sports culture — we don’t so much have that over here – that’s probably the piece that stands out more than anything.”

From a design standpoint, Cowburn’s typical goal is to get a reaction from customers when they see his product. But when it comes to the overall impact of the design and collection, Cowburn aims to bring new fans to a sport or team.

With the Bears’ collaboration, Cowburn felt a responsibility to help bridge the gap between UK fans and the NFL.

“Hopefully this collection is that perfect middle ground for people that are UK sports fans that maybe aren’t prepared to wear the oversized jerseys and everything else that goes with the NFL,” Cowburn said. “This is a way for them to get into it and start to wear the colors. There’s always that thing of when you don’t know about a sport, you want to have skin in the game. You want to pick a team. That allows you to participate.

“I really hope that there’s people out there that maybe aren’t full-on fans that are going to the game or feeling inclined to buy this collection and say, ‘I found my team. This is my team because they’re doing something cool, and it’s spoken to me.’ And that’s it. For the rest of their lives, they could be Bears fans.”