Nike Sportswear “Destroyer” New York Varsity Jacket

Following up on our coverage of the Tokyo version, Nike Sportswear puts us up onto the NYC edition. The jacket, officially dubbed the NSW Destroyer Jacket x NY by Nike Sportswear, represents the spirit of competitive sport in tribute to this great city that Nike Sportswear finds its home on Mercer Street, New York. A release is scheduled for tomorrow, December 18th, 2009 exclusively through 21 Mercer Street.

It’s a Destroyer. And it’ll obliterate all your preconceptions about letterman’s jackets. But what’s in a name? Back in ’06, Nike designers began a mission to re-craft iconic sports apparel in the most technical materials they could find. The ubiquitous American varsity jacket was an obvious choice for the experiment that would become Nike Sportswear. Raiding the All Conditions Gear (ACG) innovation cache, they found fabrics, laminates and bonding methods that could brave nasty weather but still look fresh. The first letterman’s jacket was for an imaginary team called the Dunk High Destroyers. Limited numbers were produced. The next version got even more technical, but the Destroyer name stuck. The laser-cut, waterproof, bonded zipper became a signature feature of those early hybrids, encapsulating what you often couldn’t see on the products: futuristic functionality that never detracts from a timeless aesthetic.

Nike Sportswear
21 Mercer Street
New York, NY 10013