Adidas Golf Teams With Rapper Macklemore’s Bogey Boys Brand

An impromptu conversation at this year’s Masters Tournament was the catalyst for a collaboration between one of golf’s legacy apparel brands, adidas, and one of the category’s newest players: Bogey Boys, the brand founded in 2021 by rapper and avid golfer Macklemore.

The adidas x Bogey Boys collab announced today matches the former’s sport and lifestyle heritage with the latter’s classic vintage style. The apparel, accessories and footwear, for men and women, are inspired by nostalgic and sporty fashion in golf and tennis from past eras.

“Adidas is a legacy brand that I grew up with,” said the 39-year-old Macklemore, whose given name is Ben Haggerty. As a youngster in the Seattle area, he recalls the adidas County was the only sneaker his dad would wear. “He would have a pair on ice, and he would have a pair that he would mow the grass in,” adds the singer and songwriter, who also vividly remembers Eddie Murphy’s Axel Foley character wearing the same shoes in the movie ‘Beverly Hills Cop.’

“That iconic logo was something that’s just been burned into my memory,” Macklemore said. “That was my childhood and my first introduction in the sneaker world. So, we just continued the conversation (that started in Augusta, Georgia) and finally, it was like, ‘Okay, let’s do this.”

The limited-edition collaboration will be available June 14, the day before the start of the men’s U.S. Open, at the adidas and Bogey Boys websites, the adidas app, and at select retailers.

Macklemore said they dug into the archives for inspiration – old magazines, catalogs and look books – to find “the gems of designs” that were being produced in the 1970s and 1980s in the golf and tennis space. Those finds were the impetus for the collection.

But for Macklemore, one of the coolest parts of the collaboration is that they were able to incorporate adidas’s classic and rarely used “trefoil” in which the brand’s three-stripe logo resembles a leaf.

“It’s used with adidas Originals, but it’s not used in adidas Golf. And so, I asked about using this one because this was my childhood, this is what was in my head,” Macklemore said. “And our friends over in Germany gave us the thumbs up. So that’s co-branding on the apparel. And that’s just super dope to me that they were able to bring that classic logo with our own into this collaboration.”

And while Macklemore has a passion for fashion, it’s hard-pressed to match his avidity for golf, a sport he only picked up in 2018. Consider that on his recent European tour, on the heels of the March release of his third solo album, “Ben,” he said he was probably playing golf five days a week.

“I’d be exhausted and go to bed at four o’clock in the morning but set the alarm for a 7:30 a.m. tee time,” he said. “I just love it.”

Part of the reason for starting his Bogey Boys apparel line was to help inspire others to play by offering a look and style that was different. Macklemore has long been wearing vintage, thrifted old golf clothes since he was a teenager and those unique styles of yesteryear continue to resonate with him.

“I’ve always loved fashion design and always wanted to bring my own brand to life,” he said. “And in golf, it was like, ‘Oh, there’s a lane to be filled here.’ This gives me an avenue to pursue design in a different way.”

His hope is that he encourages others to try golf and they eventually come to share his passion.

“There’s something about that dopamine hit or the euphoria you get when you connect and compress the golf ball and it goes where you intended it to go,” Macklemore said. “And that’s a feeling that I will chase for the rest of my life. I have no doubt. There are the parallels of life — of acceptance when it’s not going the way that you want, complete overwhelming joy when it is, and everything in between. It’s the greatest game ever invented and I’m just really lucky that I found it.”