New Era cap to celebrate the anniversary of the influential 59FIFTY

An iconic cap made by a four-generation Buffalo family business will celebrate its 70th anniversary Thursday.

New Era Cap’s 59FIFTY fitted cap, created in 1954 to help standardize the baseball uniform and improve the visibility of the team logo, has become a revered and collected product while transcending sport, as well as style and Culture.

The cap silhouette has not only become a mainstay of the sports scene, but it has also transformed into a form of individuality, incorporated into streetwear fashion and worn on catwalks, red carpets and even in halls of meeting.

The brand will celebrate the cap’s history and influence during 59FIFTY Day starting at 10 a.m. at New Era’s global headquarters on Delaware Avenue. It will feature a collaboration with Perry’s Ice Cream, merchandise, music from DJ Milk and DJ Yes, and an appearance by Buffalo Bills offensive lineman Dion Dawkins. Major League Baseball teams hosting home games that day will also celebrate at their stadiums.

“It has become the perfect medium to express your sense of style, your affinity for a baseball team, a city or a brand,” said Billy Loncar, director of advanced concepts and design at New Era. “It’s trend-driven. It starts with the design of the cap with its unique silhouette. It’s great for the brand, but it’s also fantastic for the people. Whether you’re in sports or culture, it means different things to different people. »

When Jim Wannemacher arrived at New Era 24 years ago, he wasn’t sure how the company’s products and his role would evolve.

But these days, he’s not surprised when New Era brings athlete ambassadors — some of the best-known in football, baseball and basketball, other influential brand representatives, sports league officials — to Buffalo. professionals, famous designers and pop culture influencers.

New Era now employs about 1,400 people worldwide, including about 360 in Buffalo, most of whom work at the former Federal Reserve Bank, where the company moved in 2006.

“When I started, we were making baseball caps and I asked myself, ‘What more could we do?’ But hey, I was surprised,” said Wannemacher, senior director of archives and brand marketing at New Era. “We now work with some of the world’s leading designers here in Buffalo. It’s impressive.”

Harold Koch, son of New Era Cap founder Ehrhardt Koch, imagined a more contemporary style for baseball caps. His design of the 59FIFTY included a 22-step production process, creating a cap with a structured front panel, tall, wide crown, flat curved visor and closed back available in fitted sizes.

New Era itself was born in Buffalo 34 years earlier, in 1920, on Genesee Street and Bailey Avenue. The company has been tied to baseball since 1934 — originally making hats for the Cleveland Indians — and the relationship with MLB helped New Era initially develop a major platform, Wannemacher said. The cap was redesigned from wool to a more polyester base with moisture-wicking cooling agents in 2007.

It became the official cap of MLB in 1993, and the 59FIFTY is now also worn by athletes on draft day in NFL, NBA and WNBA championship parades.

Over the years, the cap silhouette has also become the backdrop for collaborations with artists, influential designers and global fashion brands, including Gucci, Supreme, Fear of God, Virgil Abloh and Helmut Lang, as well as music celebrities like Jay-Z and Billie. Eilish.

In 1996, director and famous New York sports fan Spike Lee was looking for a red Yankees hat to wear to a World Series game and New Era got permission to make it, giving rise to an alternative style and custom team caps. and collaborations with celebrities and influencers. Immediately, New Era’s activity tripled.

Until the 1980s, the only way to get one of these caps was to be a professional baseball player. The company received its first customer orders by mail through an ad in the Sporting News for $12.95 per hat and received seven full bags of responses with orders. Back then, hats were made to order.

There has also been a logo sticker phenomenon linked to 59FIFTY caps. What was first developed as a functional piece so the customer would understand the style and size of the cap without opening the caps and leaving a mess in stores has become a piece of the hat that symbolizes authenticity and status and often remains on the cap.

New Era attempted to respond to its style iterations by changing the color of the logo stickers, but there was an immediate backlash, forcing the company to revert to black and gold stickers for fitted hats and silver and black stickers for all other products.

But not every 59FIFTY has been a winner and there have been quality issues in different iterations of the cap.

“We’re always looking to change our hats and do our best,” Loncar said.

• New Era plans to reintroduce its flagship stores in the United States, such as the one in Buffalo at the company’s headquarters, starting with a second location in New York.

The Delaware Avenue store is the company’s only branded store in the United States, but the products are sold in many sportswear and hat stores like Lids.

New Era had nine such stores in the United States, before all but one closed.

• Design for New Era’s first eponymous clothing line, Brand New Era, will be led by Dao-Yi Chow, who was named creative director and vice president of the company last week.

Chow, who will also oversee merchandising and marketing, was previously creative director at Sean John and co-creative director at DKNY.

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