ROWING BLAZERS RELEASES LATEST CAPSULE WITH LANDS’ END

by Stephen Garner

Rowing Blazers has released its latest collaboration with American heritage brand Lands’ End.

The newest drop consists of a split-color “Port/Starboard” windbreaker, and a ‘90s-inspired teal and magenta rugby with a crisp white twill collar. The windbreaker design is adapted from the Lands’ End archives but rendered now in water-resistant nylon with mesh lining. The rugby is 100 percent cotton and features the sleeve patch of all Rowing Blazer’s limited-edition collaborative rugbies.

The windbreaker draws on the Lands’ End’s nautical roots (the company began as a supplier of yachting equipment) – and of course on Rowing Blazers’ own origins in the sport of rowing and as an outfitter to rowing clubs and teams around the world. The rugby speaks to a chapter in the history of the rugby shirt that is often overlooked: not the 1870s and the birth of international rugby union, or even the 1960s and the days of Jagger and Hockney. But rather the 1990s, when the rugby, as we know it, came into its own, and served as a canvas for color combinations that bring a smile to the face of anyone who lived through that strange and wonderful decade.

“Our collaborations with Lands’ End – last season and this season – are all about nostalgia,” said Jack Carlson, founder of Rowing Blazers. “That’s the key for me. I think my generation has a great sense of nostalgia – a great longing, in fact – for the ’80s and ’90s. Lands’ End was an important part of my youth, and as a brand Lands’ End did so much to make bright colors part of the everyday visual vernacular of American households across the country. Lands’ End was also instrumental in making the rugby shirt a staple of the American wardrobe. That passion for color, the sense of fun, the feeling for tradition without being stuffy, the sense of nostalgia without being stuck in the past — these are the elements of shared DNA between Rowing Blazers and Lands’ End.”

The limited-edition Rowing Blazers x Lands’ End collection, which retails between $70 and $95, is now available at landsend.com, rowingblazers.com, and in Rowing Blazers retail stores.