Images courtesy of Bristol Studio
HOW BRISTOL STUDIO BRINGS BASKETBALL TO LIFE
THE PASSION OF HOOPS
In a sequence of He Got Game that uniquely breaks the fourth wall, ”Jesus Shuttlesworth'' delivers directly to camera, smirking: “Basketball is like poetry in motion.” This motif of Spike Lee’s 1998 homage to basketball embodies how a lot of us appreciate the game throughout our lives. When you strip back the sport’s largely unachievable pursuit of greatness and acclaim, what remains is perhaps the purest distillation of the game: poetry. Whether it’s the aesthetic or the rush of endorphins that perfectly coincides with the trademark sound of leather swooshing through nylon, basketball is a feeling. And this feeling will endure far longer than the actual quest to become a professional player.
This ethos is at the core of Bristol Studio, an L.A.-based (but quickly globalizing) clothing brand that epitomizes the way so many of us view the game into our adulthood. Two of the founders, MAASAI Ephriam and Jake Fenster, stopped by our offices recently and then sat down for a long ZOOM to share how their brand exists as a vessel for basketball to stretch far beyond the confines of a pipeline to the NBA.
THE HISTORY
“The thing I love most about Bristol is how much they care about the people. Most brands claim to use the word community. But they actually breathe it.”
MAMADOU BAH
THE ETHOS
Despite being a brand centered around basketball, a vast majority of their clothing is not created to actually play the game. It’s based on an ethos of viewing the game as an extension of our lives; obviously very few hoop lovers ever play professional basketball. “We started with raw denim, really learning how to make one of the more complicated pieces,” Fenster says of the original garment. “We looked up to APC, Naked and Famous and brands that created really strong raw denim, because it told the wearer’s story, right? So however you move, how you put your phone, your wallet, your keys, how active your lifestyle is, that's shown through how the pants wear over time, and that really stuck with us—that ability to story tell through product was just one of the first things that originally excited us. So, that led us on that journey to really figure out how to continue to make product"—here Ephriam interjects and finishes Fenster’s sentence—”that tells stories.”
This dynamic occurs throughout our conversation—Fenster and Ephriam’s perceptions of the brand are in such lock-step that they frequently overlap when speaking, echoing the same sentiments. Ephriam continues:
“Our love of basketball, it wasn't really being communicated in the way that we had a relationship with the game, which was more of an art form, more of a therapeutic practice, community, a dance, something very beautiful. And 2016/2017 is when we really locked in and found our stride. Our take on it at the time was a full warmup basketball tracksuit, snap buttons and everything to look like a basketball tracksuit, but it was denim.”
Throughout our conversation, we keep returning to the notion of basketball as being far more than a pursuit of getting into the NBA. “Basketball to us is this thing where you're so creative. It's not just a sport where you're going through the motions, you're thinking, you're quickly reacting, you have a counter to a counter, depending on what the defender is doing, you're deciding how you're moving through that space of flow. It’s a nonverbal language that you understand and speak,” Fenster says. “And you move through this space like a dance. And you realize how much creativity, how much thought, how much intentionality is contributed in that space. And you realize when you take it out of that space, it stays with you. It's not like it's all stuck on the floor. This is something that bleeds into your everyday—to culture, to community, to music, fashion.”
“It’s that energy and exactly that sentiment that we wanted to cultivate through Bristol Studio and have that be the identity of the brand,” Ephriam hops in, going on: “This is a brand that is looking at basketball differently, and it's looking at it in a way that we have found out 98 percent of the people in the world look at it. There's only a small percentage of people who actually are trying every day to be the next LeBron. Most people have a very beautiful relationship to this game and appreciation for this game that is more therapeutic and more community driven and more for the visual aesthetic of it than it is actually wanting to go dominate on the court. That's the audience that we have found resonating with our brand.”
THE
BRISTOL RUN
Bristol Studio was started by three lifelong friends: Luke Tadashi, MAASAI Ephriam, and Jake Fenster. The former two have been best friends since they were 11 years old—a friendship that orbited around basketball from its genesis. Luke’s younger brother, Hiro, is Fenster’s childhood best friend. This age gap, which in the naivety of childhood must have seemed chasmic, was also bridged by basketball.
Ephriam and Luke grew up playing ball together every night at a house in Santa Monica on Bristol Avenue. “That was the watering hole of the community, it’s where we would all show up and play 21 until late at night, just nonstop,” Ephriam tells me over ZOOM, grinning with nostalgia. “[The name] was a nod to those childhood memories, honoring those times and staying true to ourselves. It's a reminder for us to stay true to those versions of us, the kid versions.”
Fenster jumps in with how these nascent days inform the brand story to this day: “It’s that story of connecting beyond the sport. The sport being this thing that leads people and introduces them, but then you build those relationships off the court as well. The ethos of our brand, from an early point in all of our memories, is that Bristol Studio really incorporates much more than product. We are telling stories through content, through community, and product.”
Fast forward from childhood to 2013, when Luke Tadashi first started Bristol Studio. “A lot of the DNA of the brand was built from Luke's perspective, because at the beginning, he really had that initial vision for this basketball brand and the way to communicate it differently,” Ephriam says, before adding; “Since then, all three of us have been cultivating and building this identity and really chipping away at what it means and what it looks like.”
Luke has stepped away from the daily operations of the brand in the past few years, but “his DNA and identity is still there. We've really built that together and we're able to move that forward because we have such a strong identity at this point that we really know how to communicate visually and intellectually,” notes Ephriam.
THE GENESIS OF BRISTOL STUDIO
This conversation very easily transitions into one of the most tangible manifestations of the Bristol Studio ethos: The Bristol Run. Fenster dives in:
“That ethos that we're talking about, the perfect example is our Bristol Run. Everyone that plays in our Bristol runs—sometimes NBA players and people will come play—but it's directors, authors, actors, musicians, business people. Basketball is this thing that connects everybody. Even though it's not their everyday pursuit, it's a massive part of their everyday pursuit, from an approach standpoint, a preparation standpoint. To just, you know, a release, a release, right? It is this thing that drives every single person there. Who are we—who is this culture to tell people that that’s not an acceptable version of basketball? You didn't make it to the NBA, you're supposed to give up on it and stop playing the game? That's actually completely the wrong message for us. It's about celebrating that creativity, that curiosity, that preparation and mindset that's built from this game that can stay with you your whole life.”
NICK WEST
"Basketball is this thing that connects everybody."
Fenster smiles, reflecting on the runs. “We always like to take it back to when we were 12, what would make us happy,” he says. “We feel like we owe that to the other 12 year old kids like us out there, the young kids out there that love this sport, that may never play at that level, but deserve to be treated with that same respect and appreciated for their love, for their passion, and even use that as a way to show them other opportunities through this game.”
The passion the Bristol team has for the game and their clothes has certainly made an impact on others. “The thing I love most about Bristol is how much they care about the people. Most brands claim to use the word community. But they actually breathe it,” says Mamadou Bah, founder of C’est Bon and a perfect example of the kind of ethos Bristol embodies. “The runs are pivotal,” he continues. “In our space, things move so fast. The runs are a good way for everyone to come together and release—stress free—for a couple hours.”
CHAPTERS
In addition to manufacturing their uniquely designed garments and managing an ever-growing community, Fenster and Ephriam have been producing a series of masterfully-executed mini-docs covering the very subject the brand embodies: the many ventricles of basketball outside of the professional game. These stories, which range from Fenster’s college professor to an Italian “Church of Basketball,” former college superstars and more, are in part inspired by the duo’s insistence that basketball is a global sport. Throughout this process, they have consistently worked with David Hollander, who wrote How Basketball Can Save the World, and was a professor of Fenster’s at NYU. He is the subject of one of the episodes, and plays an instrumental role in the production of a few others.
Throughout his education, Ephriam spent some time in Italy and Asia: “We talk about how those experiences overseas really solidified this basketball story we're telling, because a lot of times the ways that we'd make communities overseas was just by going to the local park and playing. That's how I learned Italian, literally just by playing basketball at the park an hour outside of Florence, every single day. That's how I made my lunch money every day. It really just solidified that the stories we're telling are very real and there's a real global thirst.”
More broadly about the project, Fenster explains: “The goal there was going back to being a lifestyle brand. Everything that we've done is born from storytelling. And we were trying to figure out, how do we showcase our product to people in a digital space without it feeling like it's not us? When you look around the space, you see everyone doing these short videos, or they're showcasing product, highlighting details, fabric. That's all exciting and cool, but for us, we really wanted to find a way to have a deeper connection with our audience and communicate that these products are much more than the fabrics and the quality, which is there, but they're born from the story of the people who wear them and identify with them.
”From there, we understood our ‘why’ very clearly, about how this game is transcendent, it creates sanctuary. There's no barriers to access. It builds opportunity,” Fenster continues. “That's our story, and we identified that there are so many of these stories around the world. And we're so lucky to be able to hear them, to interact with people, and have access. So we thought, what better way to communicate our story and these stories than through this digital medium, where we can also showcase product. The product is not the focus, but these stories—which again connect to the product and vice versa—are highlighted.”
A particular highlight is the story of the Church of Basketball, chronicling the quest of the citizens of a small town in Italy to get their local saint recognized as the patron saint of basketball.
The guys have another chapter coming out in January about the relationship between basketball and Paris, and “we don’t plan on stopping anytime soon,” says Ephriam, before Fenster adds: “It's amazing. We're telling these stories and it's opening people's eyes up to, ‘Oh wait, basketball is much more than Michael Jordan jumping from the free throw line. It actually has this global impact in communities, and it's changing lives all over the world.”
Reflection Eternal
I ask Fenster and Ephriam what has been the most rewarding aspect of bringing this brand to life over the past decade. The former has felt most gratified by being able to bring people’s stories to life around the globe:
“The storytelling component is big, being able to travel the world, not passively, engaged in those communities through this sport. It's been an incredible honor, where I think you get your perspective opened so much. And that happening through this game is just a joy to really be able to have that experience.”
Ephriam has loved the feeling of personal growth derived from this journey: “I tell people now, if you ever want to challenge yourself to be the best version of yourself, then start a business, because you can't hide from yourself, you have to confront and address all of your little toxic traits, all of your insecurities, all of your weaknesses, everything comes to the forefront. I feel truly grateful that I've been able to spend the last decade of my life building towards a dream with people that I love. I feel like that's what life's all about. And I personally feel extremely fulfilled in being able to do that. That, for me, has been my favorite part: the journey and the growth, the ups and the downs. Building something with my brothers. That, to me, is priceless.”
By: Charlie Kolbrener
JAKE FENSTER
"Basketball is this thing that
connects everybody."
