Design By Common Sense

To inject fresh perspective into the creation of its basketball uniform, the WNBA decided to hire outside designers with backgrounds in women's activewear and sports licensed products. So in November 1996, the league brought in expert apparel designers Christina Muth and Margaret Green to assist the fledgling WNBA in the design and development of a unique but traditional uniform. Above all, the uniform needed to be a high-performance garment that would allow the athletes to play professional basketball to the best of their abilities.

A committee of NBA and WNBA staff, led by Linda Jameison, was formed to help Muth and Greener develop the uniform. At initial meetings, the committee explored different concepts, looking at trends in sports licensed products as well as trends in women's activewear and sportswear.

The designers shortly returned with sketches of more than three dozen concepts, including dresses, lycra unitards (similar to what the Australian Olympic team wore at the 1996 Summer Olympics), skorts (skirts/shorts), tunics over shorts and a variety of two-piece (shorts and top) uniforms.

Some concepts, such as the dresses, were discarded relatively quickly; others were used in altered forms. For example, WNBA players will wear cotton/Lycra compression shorts and Action-Tech Jogbras under their uniforms, an evolution from the idea of the lycra unitard. Approximately one dozen concepts were selected to explore more closely, considering details like how graphics would look on the silhouette, what specifications should be made so the garment would best fit a female athlete, even seemingly small issues like whether to un-tuck the shirt or not were attentively evaluated.

Of these twelve concepts, seven were selected to be made up as prototypes; interestingly, the last of the seven to "make the cut" ended up as one of the eventual final choices, proving that what looks good on paper may not look great on a person, and, as in this case, vice versa. Champion presented a variety of possible fabrications that might be appropriate for the uniforms. The NBA's committee selected four of those fabrics to work with: dazzle, striped dazzle, micro mesh and box jacquard mesh (see descriptions of each fabric below). The final versions of the uniforms mix and match these four fabrics.

Champion created the prototypes and in late January joined the uniform committee at the NBA offices to evaluate how the uniforms would look on models. Additional NBA staff from the areas of television broadcasting, basketball operations and other departments also attended this meeting to give input on if the uniforms would be translate well on television, how they would look to fans in arenas, etc. The uniform committee used this opportunity to experiment with different graphics -- applying numbers, names and logos on the uniforms in different ways directly onto the models. Four uniforms were selected.

NBA staff showed the four uniforms to WNBA players Lisa Leslie, Rebecca Lobo, Sheryl Swoopes and Lynette Woodard at NBA All-Star Weekend in February 1997. One version was discarded after they pointed out that the graphics on the front made the fabric "pull." The four players each received prototypes based on their comments to try out. One week later, they gave their input, which helped hone the details of fit.

On May 21, 1997, the three different silhouettes (one v-neck, two crew necks) that will outfit the WNBA teams this season were revealed to the public. As per the original mission, they are high-performance garments that are unique to the WNBA but respect a basketball uniform tradition. We hope that someday they will hang in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame with the first NBA uniform as a reflection of the evolution of women's courtwear.

Fabric Descriptions:

All four fabrics are easy to wash and wear, will release moisture (hydrophobic) and will retain their bright colors. The striped dazzle and box mesh patterns add dimensionality and allows added air circulation.

Dazzle: Lightweight dazzle (4.0 - 4.4 oz.). Fabric has a sheen. 100% nylon for colors, 100% polyester for white.

Striped dazzle: Lightweight dazzle (4.0 - 4.4 oz.). Same basic fabric as a regular dazzle, but is delustre printed into stripes. This is a new fabric Champion has not used before in its professional athlete programs. (Points of reference for what this fabric looks like: The New England Patriots have a stripe in their blue jerseys; it looks a little like how a baseball outfield looks after it's been mowed -- alternating different shades of the same color; the strip in the dazzle is barely discernible).

Micro-mesh: Midweight basic mesh fabric (4.2 - 5.2 oz.). 100% nylon for colors, 100% polyester for white.

Boxed micro-mesh: Midweight mesh (5.1- 5.3 oz.). 100% nylon for colors, 100% polyester fro white. This is a new fabric Champion has not used before in its professional athlete programs. (Looks like a subtle checkerboard pattern, but the effect is achieved with the fabric, which is all one color).