Robbie Laing, Vicente Reynoso, and Alex Simpson are a solid team. They played soccer together in high school. Over a decade later, the same three-man unit runs Full Kit, an independent vintage collective. Despite all residing in different cities now – Brooklyn, Dallas, and Los Angeles, respectively – the Full Kit team still resembles its original form. No trades, no new recruits, still an emphasis on the love of the game.

Full Kit was built on two passions — music and soccer — and one shared frustration: the merch in both sectors was terrible. Five years in, the Brooklyn label has carved out a lane designing for “the fan,” reworking deadstock jerseys into bootlegs and official collaborations spanning Cocteau Twins, Fred again.., Militarie Gun, Mount Kimbie, and Mary Jane Dunphe.

IRL programming matches the output — events like the “Frank Ocean Cup” and a series of Secret Radio DJ sets, thrown with 38 Meadow St. studio-mate Secret Futebol Club, bring the same crowd off the feed and onto the pitch.

“We were never focused on filling any specific gap in the market,” explains Laing. “We just felt like there weren’t great soccer merch offerings. Everything we were seeing was either produced at super low quality or didn’t feel authentic to the sport.”

Reynoso echoes the sentiment and adds, “All of the soccer merch was super low-effort – brands just tacking on whatever badge or design. The difference with Full Kit is that, even from the beginning, every detail matters.”

The idea clicked for Laing in high school while working at Justin Vernon‘s Eaux Claires festival. A Wisconsin kid and lifelong Bon Iver fan, he’d grabbed a patch as a souvenir — then thought to iron it onto a deadstock jersey.

The seed had been there longer, though — back to high school games and weekend pickup matches, when someone was always controlling the aux. “Usually, the people who took the aux had very different tastes from mine,” Laing laughed. He was deep in a Guns N’ Roses phase; his teammates were just discovering Lil Wayne. “So part of Full Kit’s roots come from me wanting to find community in people who have the same music taste as me.”

Full Kit has since built exactly that community, pulled together through bootlegs, commissions, and official collaborations shaped by each founder’s taste. Djo tapped in for merch; Mau P and Aphex Twin got one-of-ones. Scroll the label’s Instagram, and you’ll find a SOPHIE kit reworked on an UMBRO blank, or a long-sleeve adidas jersey reimagined à la Goblin by Tyler, the Creator.

“Both communities are rooted in the fan,” Reynoso says. “So many people are passionate about either fashion or music, and then there’s that niche group of people who are passionate about both and want to represent that intersection.”

Ahead of Full Kit’s Hypebeast Cup pop-up, where the trio will debut an exclusive new capsule, Laing and Reynoso break down how they’re designing for the kid at the barricade and in the bleachers.

Hypebeast: Why did you create Full Kit? Was there a specific goal or gap in the market you were eyeing?

Robbie Laing: To rewind all the way to the beginning, Vicente, Alex, and I all played soccer together in high school. It started as a pandemic project; we wanted to do something together, and we didn’t really know what at first. We weren’t like, Oh, let’s combine fashion, music, and soccer. That wasn’t the intended plan or path we were trying to go. We just wanted to work on some sort of creative project together that stemmed from being creatively frustrated in our respective workplaces. We were never focused on filling any specific gap in the market because we’re not commercial in the sense that we’re trying to sell a lot of units. We just felt like there weren’t great soccer merch offerings. Everything we were seeing was either produced at super low quality or didn’t feel authentic to the sport.

Vicente Reynoso: It was all super low-effort. Brands just tacking on whatever badge or design. The difference with Full Kit is that, even from the beginning, every detail matters. Every single detail. We try to include as much of the narrative as we can into each piece. That’s the fun part for us.

Laing: You can’t just release a jersey and expect people to be like, This is amazing. There’s so much storytelling surrounding the piece of clothing.

Robbie, your career started in music. Could you elaborate on this?

Laing: Yes, so I had been working in music for a long time, and then the company I was at stopped working on music. They were working on music festivals but ended up pivoting to TV and film pop-up experiences, so I worked on the pop-ups for Friends and The Office, and started working on product development here and there. That shift just made me realize that I wanted to be back in music.

I had this idea of putting festival branding and patches onto vintage soccer jerseys. I brought in Alex and Vicente because I’m not really a designer, and these guys could design. It was the perfect fit. We all played soccer together, and we all loved music.

Militarie Gun, Djo, Fred again… It’s safe to say Full Kit has range. Since your first music kit, how have you seen the music sector of the brand grow?

Laing: Music is really how all of our kits started in the first place. The first kit we ever made was for Justin Vernon’s festival in Wisconsin called Eaux Claires. Being from Wisconsin myself, I’m a big fan of Bon Iver. Right after college, I worked freelance in artist hospitality at festivals, and I got to work at Eaux Claires. I held onto the patch I got there, and one day I had the idea to put it on a blank jersey. We found some dope vintage Nike deadstock pieces and made an Eaux Claires bootleg jersey.

Zooming in further on the Militarie Gun collaboration, what did that creative process look like?

Laing: It was pretty fast and seamless, honestly. The band’s label hit us up and sent over a timeline to work with. Given the timing, the only thing we could really execute was reworked vintage blank jerseys – which is a bigger challenge than it might look like. We don’t have 50 of the same vintage blank jerseys, so we have to align on a color palette and then source at least 50 shirts. The group gave us an idea of general colors and sizing, so we sent them screenshots of stuff from our archive and other stuff that we’d sourced. From there, we sent some mocks of different lockups. We were a little worried it was going to be a long approval process, but it went so quickly, and they approved it immediately. We’re actually working on some more stuff for them right now. They’re great.

Jumping out of the music realm, some other collaborations you guys have done include The Ground and Knickerbocker. How do you guys decide which other brands you want to work with?

Laing: It’s a challenge, and we’re learning that we don’t have an infinite amount of time to take on every single project. We wanted to be sure to take on the collaboration with The Ground because when we were starting off, we were the first people to book a concert at The Ground. We started doing shows and other different events there, and we still do today. They came to us to make a run of 130 numbered shirts. 130 because they’re on 130 Madison Street. The Ground is part of our history. With Knickerbocker, I played soccer with the founder, Andrew. Major shout-out to Andrew, because he’s taught us so many things and was gracious enough to collab with us when we were just little guys.

Reynoso: He’s a big mentor of ours. He lives in Portugal now, and he’s also helped set us up with some of the factories that he works with out there. I can’t speak highly enough of him.

A theme throughout this whole conversation has been community. How do you feel like Full Kit is shaping the current soccer community?

Reynoso: Rob mentioned the events that we would throw in the early days. People got together for live music and footy.

Laing: Sharing a space with Secret Futebol Club is a big part of it, too. We’ve done a lot of work together. If we throw an event, we’ll invite them to be a part of it. If they throw an event, they’ll invite us to be a part of it. We play soccer with all these homies. Vicente, living in Dallas, has his own folks that he’s building rapport with and plays with. Dallas is a really sick soccer community, as well. Same with Alex out in LA.

Reynoso: I’ve explained it to Rob, but Dallas is such a big city that it has all of these different pockets of footy culture, and it’s only growing. There are these three guys out there who launched Tifo Market, which is starting to shape a similar soccer culture out there. As Rob mentioned, it’s sharing space. Sharing ideas. Getting together. Everyone just likes to hang, have a beer, and chill, you know?

Laing: That’s what’s awesome about having this space. And Vincente, I wish you lived here [laughs], but it’s sick that he gets to build community in Dallas, too.

How do you feel that the soccer community and the music community converge?

Reynoso: The fan. Both communities are rooted in the fan. That’s my interpretation, and Rob’s might be different. Whether it’s a football or soccer fan, or a music fan, both are very passionate, and both want to represent. It’s almost like a reflection of their personality. Rob will probably speak more on this, but in both cases, the merchandise just misses the mark. Where’s the passion? Where’s the fun?

Laing: I agree completely. I talk a lot about storytelling, and not to overexaggerate anything, but I think it all ultimately boils down to people wanting to rep the things that they like. It’s kind of like somebody wearing a Supreme T-shirt; they want to be a part of that tribe in some way — even though the initial meaning of that tribe has kind of evolved and morphed. People want to be tied to it. A lot of the things we’re doing at the start feel like jamming things together that don’t always make sense, but it makes sense in that people like bands, and people like soccer, and there is a place to put them together.

Reynoso: So many people are passionate about either fashion or music, and then there’s that niche group of people who are passionate about both and want to represent that intersection.

Laing: When we were playing soccer in high school, someone would always be on the aux before the game in the locker room. Usually, the people who took the aux had very different tastes than I did, so part of Full Kit’s roots come from me wanting to find community in people who have the same music taste as me. No offense to Lil Wayne, but I had to force myself to listen to him at the time. I love Lil Wayne now, but back then, I was in my Guitar Hero era, so I was big into Guns N’ Roses.

Reynoso: Yeah, like everyone’s got their own soundtrack to their pickup game in their head.

What would be on each of your pick-up game soundtracks?

Laing: Vicente and I have completely different tastes [laughs]

Reynoso: Completely different.

Laing: Sometimes Vicente will put something on, and I’m like, I’ve never even heard this, but this is dope. Send me the playlist.

Reynoso: I’m a Mexican-American, so my soundtrack has a lot of Latino artists on it. Carlos Vives, Maná, Banda. Even within the Latino spectrum of music, there are so many different regional sounds. I think having completely different tastes is a strength of ours because we can tap into so many different things.

Laing: One artist that we can agree on, though, is George Clanton.

Reynoso: Yes! We both love him. Shout out to George Clanton, dude.

Laing: We made a one-of-one jersey for him ages ago.

What are some of your favorite kits you’ve ever designed?

Laing: The Cocteau Twins kit was on the bucket list. Another artist I want to shout out is Mary Jane Dunphe. She gave us a lot of creative freedom, and we got to work really closely with her on the design process.

Reynoso: Wow, I don’t even know. There are so many. Romy was fun. She had a pop-up pickup event. She was another artist who let us have a lot of creative freedom, and that’s always great when you can just be trusted with a vision and then you deliver, and the artist is like, This is awesome.

Laing: It also helped that the record had a strong identity.

Reynoso: I think Cocteau Twins was my favorite reaction from people.

Laing: Seeing articles being published in different languages about it was really cool.

If you could design or collaborate with any musician on a kit, who would it be?

Laing: There are a couple of bootlegs that we did that I would want to do real releases for. I’d love to do Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails or Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure. Robert Smith is allegedly nasty at playing soccer. I bought a photo from his old photographer’s archive of him wearing a Full Kit England, and he’s with the singer of Big Country, who is wearing a Full Kit Scotland.

Reynoso: I’ve been wanting to do a hardcore or hardcore-adjacent jersey for a while now. One band in particular I would love to get is Lie, a hardcore Latino band out of Texas. Locked Out, too, is another Midwest hardcore band that I love listening to. I don’t know, something grittier would be fun to mix it up.

Laing: My answer is too preppy for you. [laughs]

Reynoso: [laughs] This is why we work well, you know?

What’s next for Full Kit? What are your future goals for the brand?

Laing: Just to keep making stuff that we like. I don’t know, it sounds so lame.

Reynoso: I know, yeah. Fuck.

Laing: And world domination.

Reynoso: For me, it’s always a constant evolution of our idea bank. I want to just keep adding to the stack, continue evolving, and create stuff that gets us excited. That’s what’s most important for all three of us: to always work on things that get us excited while still conveying our creative voice. Something I like to say is that you can see our hand in every one of our designs, be it in-line or a collaboration.

Laing: The dream is to do this so we don’t have full-time jobs, but not so that we compromise our creative integrity in any way. That’s the challenge, and the hope.

Check out Full Kit at the Hypebeast Cup later this week, where the brand is hosting a custom button-making workshop on Saturday, and live music bumping the entire weekend.

Hypebeast Cup Pop Up
430 West Broadway
New York, New York 10012

Monday – Saturday 11am- 7pm
Sunday – 11am – 6pm