Golf wear has been invaded by athleisure.
Lululemon, Vuori and the biggest sportswear brands have trained golfers to expect clothes that stretch, breathe and move seamlessly from the gym to the office to the first tee.
Andreas Duplantis, the founder of Technically Golf, thinks he is missing something important: making clothes. can playing golf is not the same as making clothes for golfers.
His bet is that a smaller brand, native to golf, can compete with the giants by understanding the game, the culture and the people who obsess over both.
“To me, the best golf apparel feels like a pre-designed garment, but when you play in it, it stretches, breathes, dries quickly, and moves exactly the way you need it to,” he says.
After years of working in the fashion industry, Duplantis noticed a giant, in the form of Omega, in the golf clothing industry. And who better to fill it than himself?
“I’m not trying to figure out how to make our clothes work for golfers. I’m starting with the golfer and building out from there.”
Where Big Athleisure looks at its current lineup and asks, “What can we label as golf-adjacent?”, Duplantis and its growing apparel brand, Technically Golf, are doing the opposite.
I design clothes for golfers.
A new idea, right?
I’m a bit sarcastic, I know. But it seems obvious. Golf clothing should not actually be designed for golf, instead it should be designed for (enter any activity here) and simply marketed as usable for golf?
This distinction is at the center of what Duplantis is trying to build.
“I understand that serious golfers obsess over everything in their bags and on their bodies. Every detail matters to them. Making clothes that you can play golf with and understand the golfer are two very different things.”
Duplantis believes he understands the latter. And this is the philosophy behind every product that Technical Golf produces from its famous Shoulder Season polo to the Nio Half Zip.
So how do you actually produce custom made clothing for golfers?
It starts with movement.
“The ‘golf’ is built in the way the garment moves, the fabric, the color and the context in which it was created,” says Duplantis. “If you can’t comfortably swing a golf club in something we make, we won’t make it. That’s the number one design filter.”
Technically, the idea of golf on how to move golf clothing is not necessarily new. Stretch, breathability and freedom of movement are the tables at this point.
Where the brand begins to separate is in how it thinks about everything that surrounds performance: brand, CMF (color, materials and finish) and the wider aesthetics of what a golfer should be.
For Duplantis, performance doesn’t have to mean abandoning the traditions that make golf apparel distinctive in the first place.
“This core golf archetype – collared polo, tucked in, pants and a light layer of layers – feels like one of the last stands we have against the decline of ‘dress’ in American society. I will respect your codes, but I will interpret them in my own way, through my fabrics, my colors and my point of view.”
That is ultimately what makes Technically Golf interesting. Duplantis isn’t trying to throw away traditional golf style, nor is it interested in simply reproducing what the major athletic brands are already doing.
He tries to occupy the space between them: respecting the codes of golf while building something that feels distinctly modern and distinctly his own.
At the end of the day, however, Duplantis and Technically Golf welcome the different philosophical approaches to golf and golf clothing.
“I think golf is more interesting when these different philosophies coexist. Golf shouldn’t be a monoculture,” says Duplantis. “Just clear your bunkers, fix your pitch marks, keep your music at a respectful volume and keep up the pace of play.”
You can check out what Duplantis has cooking technicallygolf.com.
The place Meet the brand that takes on Big Athleisure appeared first MyGolfSpy.
