WhenPete Drago and David Boger came toDenver in 2002 — Bogerfrom Montana and Drago from Cleveland — they found a city of people who shared their same passions. Outdoor adventurers, beer obsessives, mogul mavensand concert junkies all werehere, and often were thesame person.
But therewas one passion that their fellow Denvermandidn’t share: fashion. Utilitarian flannel and blue jeans have long been the average Denver dude uniform, a vestige of the cowboyWest that Boger and Drago wanted to reinterpret, if not upend.
“They’ll go blow $50 on craft beer a night but wear the same REI T-shirt they have had for eight years,” Boger, 38, said.“But that’s one of the reasons I liked Denver, too. It wasn’t pretentious.”
Seeing a fallow field and a challenge,they dreamed up the following year, a men’s lifestyle/athleisure brand catering toDenver’s youngcity-to-mountain set. They bought 12 T-shirts and 12 hoodies for $481, branded them withtheir logo and handed them out.(The company switched tocut-and-sew clothes soon after.)
Denver may still have a way to go before becoming a regular in Esquire, but Jiberish has single-handedly made strides boosting the city’s stature in the streetwear/athleisureniche. From a bootstrapped operation run out ofBoger’s living room, the company moved into achic new RiNoflagship store last summer and is now distributed to brick-and-mortar retail stores in10 countries.
On Monday, Jiberish unveiled itshighest-profile move yet: a 10-piece “capsule” collectionfor the Colorado Rapids. It’s Major League Soccer’s fifth capsule so far, a collaboration thatpairs a boutique clothing outlet with its local team to design acustom line of gear.
The collaborationcame together over a drink at a wedding that Drago attended in Mexico last year. He struck up a conversation with his wife’s friend about streetwear and music. The friend turned out to be the vice president of the legal department for MLS. Heasked Drago if he’d be interested in teaming up with the Rapids for the league’s latest capsule.
“I thought this was bar talk,” Drago, 39, said, “like when you’re talking about vacations to Belize. Stuff that never happens.”
To his surprise, itdid happen. The league followed up with Jiberish — whichRapids players likeShkëlzen Gashi and Tim Howard hadalready had on theirfashion radar — andthe brand’slatest line was born.
Contrasting the clean, modern approachesthatPortland’s and took in their capsules, Jiberish slantsretro for its re-imagining of the Rapids. A half-zip hoodie pays homage to the team’s roots in the mid-1990s, for example, while a checkered rugby shirt harks back to the infancy of the sport itself.
The pieces are available at noon local time on May 3 on and, when the Rapids take on the Vancouver Whitecaps.
The crossover with the Rapids is only the latest fieldthe brand has welcomed under its umbrella. Thanks to a boots-on-the-powder presence on the slopes and a popular series of snowboard videos online, thecompany is first and foremost associated with winter sports. (Drago soldJiberish’sfirst T-shirt to a snowboarder out of his truck in a parking lot in Breckenridge.“Our marketing strategy has changed considerably since then,” he said.)
“We would just go to Breckenridge, hang out at these big contests and wear our stuff,” Boger said. “People started asking about it, and we were OK at skiing and snowboarding, so we didn’t look totally out of place.”
From there, Jiberish branched out into music, a long-time passion for both co-founders. Denver producer , an early adopter of the brand, partnered withJiberish on a line ofwhich have sold for hundreds of dollars on eBay, according to Drago. Since then, the company has fully integrated electronic and hip-hop into its brand, debutingstadium-toppling duo ODESZA’s and proving a hot spot for hall-of-fame rappers like Raekwon and Method Man, who’ve been spottedatthe shop in years past.
With the Rapids in tow, Jiberishhas further realized the much biggerbrand alignment that Boger and Drago began when they firstmoved here.
“I firmly believe Denver is responsible for our success. (Jiberish)wouldn’t exist without it,” Drago said. “New York, Chicago, L.A. … We give them a part of the world they vacationin or dream about as a lifestyle. There’s a cool factor.”
