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A husband-and-wife fashion company in Northeast Portland will have a special connection to the athletes boating down the river Seine at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony on Friday. Danielle McCoy and Jordan Jackson of Amen, Amen. Studio (amenamen.studio) helped design and source uniforms for roughly 200 Team Nigeria athletes, including their looks for opening and closing ceremonies and the podium.
“It’s been a busy few months, but it’s been exciting,” McCoy says. “We feel really honored to be able to contribute.”
Team Nigeria will wear the green and white of their flag in designs that combine traditional and modern elements—think Nigerian senator suits and Fila hats for the men, but partially made of mesh performance fabric. The uniforms are under the label Actively Black, an athleisure company founded by former NBA player Lanny Smith. McCoy and Jackson put Smith in touch with two women-owned companies in Lagos: Afrikstabel—a textile production company—did the dyeing, and Lekki Garment Factory did the cutting and sewing. Actively Black and Amen, Amen. Studio also collaborated for the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.
McCoy and Jackson built up their industry bona fides: as a graphic designer at Wieden+Kennedy (her) and apparel designer at Adidas and Under Armour (him) before starting up Amen, Amen. in 2019. The studio remained a side project until they both quit their jobs and went all-in last year.
“A project like the Olympics is encouraging,” McCoy says. “We just hope to keep the momentum going.”
See the rest of Willamette Week’s Best of Portland 2024 here!