Reigning Champ: Greatness in Grey

Reigning Champ was founded by Craig Anderson in 2007 in Vancouver. At that time, Anderson was a designer and garment engineer known in the industry for his penchant for premium activewear and minimalist designs. For him, fashion trends were too fleeting, and the importance of garment quality was being substituted with fast-fashion and quick sales. Anderson wanted to create a brand that would uphold his vision for athletic wear. The result: Reigning Champ was created to push high-end materials, durability, and longevity of garments. Over a decade later, that initial vision has proven to be a winner.

Using key signature fabrics such as heavyweight cotton and fleece, merino wool and twill, Reigning Champ continue to manufacture everyday staple pieces, ranging from t-shirts and sweatshirts to sneakers and accessories. The brand’s core principle – ‘Respect the details, master simplicity’ – has influenced every collection, collaboration and product released over the course of the last 12 years.

Reigning Champ’s offerings religiously come in the colour grey, whether that’s their year-round staples, their athletic wear, their fashion-focused ranges, or their collaborations with high-end and sportswear brands. Oscillating between lighter greys, bordering white, and darker tones of the colour, bordering black, the brand favours this neutral and achromatic colour above all others. Coined as a colour ‘without colour’, the grey hue allows its wearer to style up or style down, depending on mood, weather, season or context.

Aside from their range of basics – available to buy right now from SneakerHub – Reigning Champ have a knack for collaborating with other brands, while still managing to stay true to their original vision.

Reigning Champ have several clothing collaborations under their belt. In 2009, they collaborated with HUF for their S/S Collection to create a four-piece pack consisting of a polo top and a coach jacket, which came in black and grey. Three years later, and they were collaborating with Haven to create a classic military MA-1 bomber. Then, in 2014, Reigning Champ teamed up with both Everlast and Deus Ex Machina – the former pushing a Rider’s Jacket and full-zip hoodie, while the latter released a selection of tees, tanks, hoodies, shorts and crewnecks.

In more recent years, spanning from 2015 to 2019, Reigning Champ have also collaborated with the likes of Kith, ASICS Tiger, the NBA, Mitchell & Ness, New Era and Junya Watanabe, producing a wide range of apparel and accessories.

Reigning Champ get equal props when it comes to collaborating within the sneaker department. They’ve worked with adidas to create apparel and sneakers, as well as joining forces with other big brands within the streetwear industry. 

Their first sneaker colab came in 2012 when they teamed up with Converse to create two unique Converse Chuck Taylor All-Star Lows, coming in a Heather Grey and Navy Blue. In 2016, Reigning Champ partnered with ASICS Tiger to create a trio of GEL-Lyte IIIs, New Balance to push two premium suede iterations of the 530, and adidas to provide a personal twist on the coveted UltraBOOST silhouette. Talk about good things coming in threes! The UltraBOOST featured a multi-coloured black and white Primeknit base, custom insoles for comfort, and a black cage around the upper.

Several more adidas sneaker collaborations have followed. In 2017, Reigning Champ reworked an adidas PureBOOST, an adidas AlphaBOUNCE, and an adidas UltraBOOST. A year later in 2018, they put their twist on another adidas UltraBOOST, and an UltraBOOST Mid ATR. Each and every silhouette was toned down and timeless, toying with grey hues to the fullest extent. This year, Reigning Champ partnered up with ASICS to rework the GEL-Kayano 5 OG and GEL-Kayano 25, both pairs complemented with matching tracksuits and running jackets.