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As a kid growing up in Seattle, Coco Cultr founder Jesa Chiro remembers thinking that as a little sister, “your older brother just seems like the coolest person in the world,” she says. “At least to me, anyway.” Her older brother, Munya, who she describes as a “basketball fanatic,” collected everything basketball-related he could: jerseys, NBA 2K games, bobbleheads, and whatever memorabilia he could get his hands on. Some of Chiro’s earliest memories include waking up early to go to Munya’s basketball camps, watching games together, and tagging along on trips to Goodwill with him in search of jerseys. The Chiro family’s team was the Seattle SuperSonics until it was sold in 2006, later moving to Oklahoma City and rebranding as the Thunder in 2008.

While Chiro never had the innate athletic ability or handles for basketball, she did go through a brief obsessed-with-Lauren-Jackson-and-Sue-Bird phase. (Her brother had the Sonics, she had the Seattle Storm.) After receiving a wristband from Bird at age 11, she claims, “I never washed it.” Years later, she’d find her place in the sport not by way of her brother or as a WNBA fan, but through fashion.

“Why is there not any cute sportswear for women?” asks Chiro, who sits on a patio over Zoom. While that question might seem outdated in light of countless collaborations, capsule collections, and brands like Playa Society reshaping WNBA merch, Chiro called out the gap early on. When the Sonics left her hometown, the cultural and emotional pull of sports memorabilia was palpable, inspiring her to stockpile and rework jerseys. Chiro also cites Xuly. Bët’s spring 1995 collaboration with Puma—which saw deadstock soccer jerseys reimagined as dresses—as an early Coco Cultr influence. “In an interview, [Xuly.Bët designer] Lamine Badian Kouyaté said, ‘Why not use something that would go to waste and make something new and beautiful?’ That really stuck with me. It captures how I approach Coco.

”Chiro founded Coco Cultr during the height of pandemic lockdown, while studying at Western Washington University. After graduation, she moved to New York, and came across the aforementioned Xuly.Bët fashion show on YouTube one day. Inspired, Chiro went to L Train Vintage near her apartment and picked up an old Philadelphia 76ers Hardwood Classics jersey. “I didn’t know what I was going to make,” she says. “I just started cutting and sewing, no pattern, no plan.” At the time, Chiro was working retail at Lower East Side vintage store Procell. She wore her custom mini jersey dress, with the word “Sixers” across the front, to her shift the next day. Her boss clocked it immediately: “That’s really sick,” he said. “Do you have more? We should be carrying this.” And they did, becoming the first store to place an order with the brand; Procell still carries Coco Cultr today.

The sustainable label made a name for itself online with upcycled, reworked vintage pieces: two-piece sets, bikinis, and, most notably, the vintage jersey dresses. Think: A-line cut, body-conscious fit, mid-thigh hem dresses with a heavy emphasis on NBA team logos. The rarer the jersey, the more excited Chiro is to work with it. Her signature silhouette has caught the attention of the sports and streetwear industries—from celebrity stylists and WNBA teams that have gifted her jerseys to reimagine, to brands like Nike and Supreme that have tapped her for special projects.

Chiro calls herself a “digger” when it comes to seeking out vintage jerseys. “It’s fun for me to dive into what makes something rare,” she says. “What was happening at the time? Why this colorway? That’s the part I love.” These days, though, with high demand, she has rules: no Michael Jordan Bulls jerseys (too common) and deadstock Ray Allen Sonics jerseys are a priority, as are any of Kobe Bryant’s.

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Photo: Liv Solomon

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