- Notre Dame and South Carolina are facing off in the first ever NCAA basketball game in Paris.
- Under Armour teamed up with luxury designer Richfresh to create custom suits for both squads.
The NCAA is tipping off in France.
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the South Carolina Gamecocks are facing off in the first ever Oui Play Classic Monday at 1 p.m. ET (7 p.m. local time). The showdown between two of the nation's top-10 women's college hoops programs will be the first-ever NCAA basketball game played on Parisian soil.
And in keeping with the culture in the fashion capital of the world, the two teams — both of which are sponsored by Under Armour — are suiting up in luxury attire ahead of the highly anticipated contest.
Under Armour partnered with Richfresh — a high-end designer seemingly beloved by celebrities such as LeBron James, Steph Curry, Deion Sanders, and Kevin Hart — to create custom-tailored suits for the players and coaches on each side of Monday's matchup. The resulting eye-popping pieces reflect "a beautiful merger of athletics and style and luxury," Fresh, the founder of Richfresh, exclusively told Insider.
"It is going to epitomize luxury, and I think that's what female athletes need," Fresh said. "A lot of times, a lot of that energy is geared primarily to male athletes, but I think that this is a great opportunity for us to not just empower future generations of female athletes, but to actually congratulate our current female athletes."
"They're at the top of their game, so they should be wearing the best of the best," he added.
Taking on the project 'just made sense' to Fresh on a personal level
Fresh sees "a lot of parallels" between the story of his rise to prominence in the fashion world and the story of women's athletics.
After years of struggling to find a firm foothold in the industry — all while facing serious personal and financial instability — Fresh found himself living in a homeless shelter as recently as 2018. He had something of an epiphany while there and decided to leave the shelter with $300 to his name.
He quickly got to work realizing his dream and, that very same year, went on to make $1 million, he wrote in an essay for Mr. Feelgood.
Women's college basketball — and women's sports more generally — have experienced a similar meteoric rise of late. Increased viewership, media coverage, and funding has helped usher the women's game into the mainstream.
"You can't avoid seeing the elevation of women in sports," Fresh said. "Every sport — be it soccer, basketball, tennis — women are really changing the game."
But for Fresh and women's athletes — both "independent" and "self-made" entities, as the designer sees it — it took years of determination and deciding "they wanted to do this for real, even when not necessarily taken seriously" for them to break through.
"I didn't want to be in someone else's space; I created a space that belongs to me and I get to pick and choose who comes here," Fresh told Insider. "And I think they're doing the same thing; they're playing the game the way that they play the game, and they're not trying to play it to someone else's standard. This is their court."
"So I think I'm doing the same thing with how I approach fashion, how I approach my perspective on luxury through my brand, Richfresh, and also through this collaboration," he added.
Fresh makes an effort 'to understand who's going to be wearing' his pieces before designing
A key component of Fresh's design process is learning who, exactly, he's designing for so as not to "just make clothes just for the sake of it." He took his time to speak with Notre Dame's and South Carolina's coaches and players in order to determine "what superpowers do they hold."
"Fresh really wanted us players and the coaches to be involved in his creative process," Notre Dame guard Hannah Hidalgo told Insider. "I thought that was super cool, because he's not simply making outfits for us and saying, 'Okay, go wear it.' Fresh incorporated our personalities and game to ensure we vibe with what he created for us."
After speaking with the muses themselves, Fresh got to work studying each school's style, color palette, and personality. Ultimately, he combined his "own personal concepts" with "what Under Armour stands for" and what "the teams represent" to create final products that will leave those suited up feeling "like winners, like champions, like luxury," he says.
"These young ladies are warriors," Fresh said. "That's what they're going out to do, is to fight. And so I wanted to make sure that I put together some garments that look like Warriors should be wearing 'em. They look like superheroes."
"When you are wearing this, you look good," he added. "And when you look good, you play good. And when you play good, you might just win. So I just really expect that they're going to feel great. The confidence level is going to go through the roof. It feels so good. It looks so good."
'Everyone lost it' when presented with the outfits, and players on both sides expect to get a surge of confidence from the new look
Fresh flew to Paris ahead of Monday's blockbuster matchup to present his finished products to the Gamecocks and the Fighting Irish. Both teams — players and coaches alike — were extremely excited to see their new threads.
"It was a lot of commotion; the room shook a little bit," Fresh said. "You had to be here to experience it. It was in unison at the same time, everyone lost it, so that was awesome."
"But they should, because we lost it when we saw it and we know that it represents them well," he added.
Players from both teams agreed, with both Notre Dame sophomore KK Bransford and South Carolina sophomore Raven Johnson citing that when "you look good, you play good."
"Being able to express our swag definitely translates onto the court in my opinion," Bransford added.
Johnson also noted that the collaboration may very well help "boost" the profile of women's college basketball among the masses, especially considering "you have people like Stephen Curry and LeBron James wearing these type of fits."
"Women's basketball's going to keep rising because of things like this," she added.
The broader impact of Fresh's and Under Armour's efforts — as well as the Oui Play Classic at large — wasn't lost on Fighting Irish senior forward Nat Marshall:
"This event is such a monumental moment, not only for women's basketball but for women's sports as a whole," Marshall told Insider. "Putting women first and elevating us on the biggest stage with a Richfresh collaboration means so much to all of us."