Meet Full Kit, the Vintage Jersey Bootleggers Rewriting Music Merch

Ahead of their Hypebeast Cup pop-up, founders Robbie Laing and Vicente Reynoso on building a brand where Cocteau Twins, Militarie Gun, and Fred again.. all live on deadstock soccer kits.

WORDS BY ELAINA BERNSTEIN PHOTOS COURTESY OF FULL KIT

For more on the Hypebeast Cup New York, visit here. Full Kit will be making an exclusive appearance at the event from July 11th to 13th.

Robbie Laing, Vicente Reynoso, and Alex Simpson are a solid team. They played soccer together in high school. Over a decade later, the same three-man unit runs Full Kit, an independent vintage collective. Despite all residing in different cities now – Brooklyn, Dallas, and Los Angeles, respectively – the Full Kit team still resembles its original form. No trades, no new recruits, still an emphasis on the love of the game.

Full Kit was built on two passions — music and soccer — and one shared frustration: the merch in both sectors was terrible. Five years in, the Brooklyn label has carved out a lane designing for “the fan,” reworking deadstock jerseys into bootlegs and official collaborations spanning Cocteau Twins, Fred again.., Militarie Gun, Mount Kimbie, and Mary Jane Dunphe.

IRL programming matches the output — events like the “Frank Ocean Cup” and a series of Secret Radio DJ sets, thrown with 38 Meadow St. studio-mate Secret Futebol Club, bring the same crowd off the feed and onto the pitch.

“We were never focused on filling any specific gap in the market,” explains Laing. “We just felt like there weren’t great soccer merch offerings. Everything we were seeing was either produced at super low quality or didn’t feel authentic to the sport.”

Reynoso echoes the sentiment and adds, “All of the soccer merch was super low-effort – brands just tacking on whatever badge or design. The difference with Full Kit is that, even from the beginning, every detail matters.”

The idea clicked for Laing in high school while working at Justin Vernon‘s Eaux Claires festival. A Wisconsin kid and lifelong Bon Iver fan, he’d grabbed a patch as a souvenir — then thought to iron it onto a deadstock jersey.

The seed had been there longer, though — back to high school games and weekend pickup matches, when someone was always controlling the aux. “Usually, the people who took the aux had very different tastes from mine,” Laing laughed. He was deep in a Guns N’ Roses phase; his teammates were just discovering Lil Wayne. “So part of Full Kit’s roots come from me wanting to find community in people who have the same music taste as me.”

Full Kit has since built exactly that community, pulled together through bootlegs, commissions, and official collaborations shaped by each founder’s taste. Djo tapped in for merch; Mau P and Aphex Twin got one-of-ones. Scroll the label’s Instagram, and you’ll find a SOPHIE kit reworked on an UMBRO blank, or a long-sleeve adidas jersey reimagined à la Goblin by Tyler, the Creator.

“Both communities are rooted in the fan,” Reynoso says. “So many people are passionate about either fashion or music, and then there’s that niche group of people who are passionate about both and want to represent that intersection.”

Ahead of Full Kit’s Hypebeast Cup pop-up, where the trio will debut an exclusive new capsule, Laing and Reynoso break down how they’re designing for the kid at the barricade and in the bleachers.

Hypebeast: Why did you create Full Kit? Was there a specific goal or gap in the market you were eyeing?

Robbie Laing: To rewind all the way to the beginning, Vicente, Alex, and I all played soccer together in high school. It started as a pandemic project; we wanted to do something together, and we didn’t really know what at first. We weren’t like, Oh, let’s combine fashion, music, and soccer. That wasn’t the intended plan or path we were trying to go. We just wanted to work on some sort of creative project together that stemmed from being creatively frustrated in our respective workplaces. We were never focused on filling any specific gap in the market because we’re not commercial in the sense that we’re trying to sell a lot of units. We just felt like there weren’t great soccer merch offerings. Everything we were seeing was either produced at super low quality or didn’t feel authentic to the sport.

Vicente Reynoso: It was all super low-effort. Brands just tacking on whatever badge or design. The difference with Full Kit is that, even from the beginning, every detail matters. Every single detail. We try to include as much of the narrative as we can into each piece. That’s the fun part for us.

Laing: You can’t just release a jersey and expect people to be like, This is amazing. There’s so much storytelling surrounding the piece of clothing.

Robbie, your career started in music. Could you elaborate on this?

Laing: Yes, so I had been working in music for a long time, and then the company I was at stopped working on music. They were working on music festivals but ended up pivoting to TV and film pop-up experiences, so I worked on the pop-ups for Friends and The Office, and started working on product development here and there. That shift just made me realize that I wanted to be back in music.

I had this idea of putting festival branding and patches onto vintage soccer jerseys. I brought in Alex and Vicente because I’m not really a designer, and these guys could design. It was the perfect fit. We all played soccer together, and we all loved music.

Militarie Gun, Djo, Fred again… It’s safe to say Full Kit has range. Since your first music kit, how have you seen the music sector of the brand grow?

Laing: Music is really how all of our kits started in the first place. The first kit we ever made was for Justin Vernon’s festival in Wisconsin called Eaux Claires. Being from Wisconsin myself, I’m a big fan of Bon Iver. Right after college, I worked freelance in artist hospitality at festivals, and I got to work at Eaux Claires. I held onto the patch I got there, and one day I had the idea to put it on a blank jersey. We found some dope vintage Nike deadstock pieces and made an Eaux Claires bootleg jersey.

Zooming in further on the Militarie Gun collaboration, what did that creative process look like?

Laing: It was pretty fast and seamless, honestly. The band’s label hit us up and sent over a timeline to work with. Given the timing, the only thing we could really execute was reworked vintage blank jerseys – which is a bigger challenge than it might look like. We don’t have 50 of the same vintage blank jerseys, so we have to align on a color palette and then source at least 50 shirts. The group gave us an idea of general colors and sizing, so we sent them screenshots of stuff from our archive and other stuff that we’d sourced. From there, we sent some mocks of different lockups. We were a little worried it was going to be a long approval process, but it went so quickly, and they approved it immediately. We’re actually working on some more stuff for them right now. They’re great.

Jumping out of the music realm, some other collaborations you guys have done include The Ground and Knickerbocker. How do you guys decide which other brands you want to work with?

Laing: It’s a challenge, and we’re learning that we don’t have an infinite amount of time to take on every single project. We wanted to be sure to take on the collaboration with The Ground because when we were starting off, we were the first people to book a concert at The Ground. We started doing shows and other different events there, and we still do today. They came to us to make a run of 130 numbered shirts. 130 because they’re on 130 Madison Street. The Ground is part of our history. With Knickerbocker, I played soccer with the founder, Andrew. Major shout-out to Andrew, because he’s taught us so many things and was gracious enough to collab with us when we were just little guys.

Reynoso: He’s a big mentor of ours. He lives in Portugal now, and he’s also helped set us up with some of the factories that he works with out there. I can’t speak highly enough of him.

A theme throughout this whole conversation has been community. How do you feel like Full Kit is shaping the current soccer community?

Reynoso: Rob mentioned the events that we would throw in the early days. People got together for live music and footy.

Laing: Sharing a space with Secret Futebol Club is a big part of it, too. We’ve done a lot of work together. If we throw an event, we’ll invite them to be a part of it. If they throw an event, they’ll invite us to be a part of it. We play soccer with all these homies. Vicente, living in Dallas, has his own folks that he’s building rapport with and plays with. Dallas is a really sick soccer community, as well. Same with Alex out in LA.