Inside Redan: A Members-Only Golf Experience by Jon Buscemi
Encompassing premium apparel, exclusive retreats, culinary experiences and more.
Jon Buscemi likes nice things. After all, this is the man whose 24-karat gold-embellished sneakers dominated streetwear cooler talk in the mid-2010s. Designer sunglasses and Italian calfskin boots? It’s all in a day’s work for the West Coast designer whose name became synonymous with quality and aspirational lifestyle.
But that was then.
Now splitting his time between Los Angeles and Palm Beach, Buscemi has discovered a new pastime that allows him to express his impeccable sense of taste: golf. Up until this point, that meant wearing a mixture of Ralph Lauren, vintage golf brand grails and classic FootJoys. But now Buscemi is rocking a new logo, the triangular “Chequy” emblem of Redan.
Just as so many brands begin as an identification of what they feel is lacking in their respective industries, Redan is the high end label Buscemi wishes he always had. Despite the wealth in many parts of the industry, golfers aren’t exactly known for dressing well. On the other hand, Redan’s debut range of gear offers polos, sweaters, and chinos that are meticulously crafted at the same factories as many of the great Italian designer labels for a fraction of the price.
But there’s a catch. One cannot simply access the Redan website and place an order, because Redan is a members-only golf brand. The small but rapidly growing list of members are the only ones with access to the debut collection, which will evolve seasonally and include collaborations with renowned brands such as Tiffany & Co. and FootJoy. The members will place their orders in a private mobile app where they will also be able to sign up for a rotating event calendar at some of the world’s most coveted golf destinations.
Hypegolf was given the exclusive opportunity to spend a weekend with the Redan community at one of its first members’ retreats where we sat down with Buscemi to learn more about his latest project.
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Why are we down here at the Floridian Club?
This is our fourth member’s outing for Redan, and this trip is basically representing what we do from an experiential standpoint. At the end of the day Redan’s not just an apparel brand, it’s not just a concierge service, it’s not just collaborations and cool stuff. It’s the idea of getting people together and building a community.
Essentially, our membership is handpicked, invite only. And to get 12 guys down to a very special place in Palm City, Florida – the Floridian Club – and be able to have great food and wine, great conversations, people doing business, people talking about future business, playing great golf, it’s kind of all that.
“All these inspirations melded into one through a lens of fashion and through the spirit of golf, creating garments that are heirloom.”
What did you feel was missing in the golf space that made you want to start Redan?
The conception of the brand was really from a place of necessity. I’ve been playing golf for about eight years wearing my own clothes, not golf specific clothes. Maybe there were some golf specific items. You know, obviously we like to look good. We’re into fashion. We like to have things that other people don’t. So the idea was most guys work five days a week and on Saturday they put on a costume and go and play golf, and most of those costumes are poorly made.
The idea with Redan was really to create an experience, not just from the clothing standpoint, but from a feeling. Working with textile mills in Italy that I’ve had a relationship with for two decades and developing fabrics that were used for fashion, infusing them with technologies that are great for golf. So the spirit of the concept was “let’s do something different with a bit of nostalgia.” We all love Arnold Palmer or Harrison Ford from the ’60s and the ’70s. We love Dustin Hoffman, Tiger Woods in the ’90s.
All these inspirations melded into one through a lens of fashion and through the spirit of golf, creating garments that are heirloom. I would say the things that we make aren’t going to be one and done. You’re going to be buying Sea Island cotton, silk blended polo shirts and cashmere/merino wool hybrids with 2% stretch. Washable trousers that have attributes of technology in them as well so that they can move. So it’s essentially combining the ideas of form and function.
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How did you leverage your past experience building brands to carve out a space for Redan?
Fortunately enough, I started my own brand, an eponymous brand called BUSCEMI in 2011 that did pretty well. I had the opportunity to make shoes and apparel and small leather goods anywhere in the world, and I picked Italy because in my opinion they make the best apparel and footwear. So I had a head start due to the fact that I had relationships with textile mills, factories, production partners, designers, people that have done this for decades and decades and generations. So it was easy to jump off from a production standpoint because of those past relationships.
“We all love Arnold Palmer or Harrison Ford from the 60s and the 70s. We love Dustin Hoffman, Tiger Woods in the 90s.”
Who are your partners and what do they bring to the table?
Our CEO is from the tech space and worked at Meta and Facebook for a long time. So we have the technology side of Redan where everything lives in this app on your phone or your computer where you get to book your travel, you get to book your tee times, you get to buy apparel, pre-book your FootJoy collaboration that’s coming out. So that side’s taken care of.
We built an advisory board of some of the greatest human beings in my life, from artists to captains of industry to business leaders to golfers to golf pros. And essentially the great thing about golf is that it brings all these worlds together and my partners are from all walks of life. We all combine through golf and everyone brings a certain skill set to the table. So it’s a really wide range of partners.
What’s the long term vision for Redan?
The long-term vision for Redan is to build the greatest golf apparel and accessories brand that’s ever been. That’s not from an arrogant standpoint, just from a pure quality standpoint. As I said earlier, creating heirloom garments that last forever.
Besides that, we aim to work with some of the best and storied brands in the history of the world. We’re going to be doing collaborations with Tiffany making ball markers and divot fixing tools. We’re working with Bettinardi and FootJoy in the golf world. We’re working with culinary brands and creating an aspirational kind of lifestyle that for me goes all the way back to looking through the windows of fashion house doors since I was a teenager.
Trying to emulate and bring together a spirit that is a lifestyle. Not just from the golf, not just from the travel, not just from the way we dress or where we play golf. It’s really everything combined. It’s the sum of its parts.
