Origin Story

The brand started like most things, by accident. In the early Spring of 2017, Austin Cordell (Shibbroni) had a pair of his favorite jeans with a hole in the crotch and a closet full of basketball jerseys. At 26 he wasn’t really wearing the jerseys anymore, but still wanted to incorporate them somehow. His friend and long-time idea consultant Crispy suggested that he use a jersey to patch the crotch hole. After a quick photoshop session on Juxtaposer for iPhone, the idea came to life.

With no sewing experience himself, Austin took a pair of the jeans and a throwback Jordan jersey to a local shop in Palms, Los Angeles. They collaborated on ideas for the jeans and decided to do an inverted patch with the jersey numbers so they show on the outside under rips in the knees and down the leg. There was a “Home” version that featured black jeans with a red Jordan jersey and an “Away” version with a black Iverson Jersey on light blue jeans.

After seeing how expensive it was for a local shop to sew the jeans, Shibbroni decided to buy his own machine and do it himself. After buying one on Amazon and taking a Groupon class downtown in the Arts District, he learned how to thread the machine and make a tote bag. It was all trial and error from there, a few Jeans were definitely scrapped. The next 6 months were consisted of social media promotion, website building with the help of his friend Paul, and word of mouth marketing supported by then-girlfriend & roommate.

That Fall, the brand evolved - again by accident. After donating all of his warm clothes in an overly-optimistic move from Ohio to LA, Shibbroni had to buy a denim jacket to cope with the 60* weather. Buffalo Exchange, a bougie thrift shop in Santa Monica was selling a distressed light blue Zara jacket for half-price. It was the freshest jacket he had ever seen, so he bought it. It wasn’t until he got home that the back of the jacket was seen, which was covered in gold glitter. Instead of returning the jacket, a life changing idea came to mind. There were jersey scraps leftover from the Jersey Jeans which fit perfectly over the back of the jacket. Without missing a beat he sewed the back of the jacket, threw some jersey patches on the front, put the jacket on his girlfriend, and took pics for the gram. It was a hit, Jersey Jackets were the new move.

3 years had passed and it was January 2020 when he decided to diversify the site with more options and added vintage tees to the mix. There was one batch of vintage tees purchased and then corona virus hit. The shirts didn’t sell from March to July, so in July there was a trend on. TikTok to bleach dye your shirts - so we tried it. The shirts instantly sold out. More custom shirts were made, just to be bleached. As a result of that, people started requesting rap tees be bleach dyed and sold on the site. This was the beginning of Rap Tees by Shibbroni. After that, it was a floodgate of ideas. We started making 20 new designs every month and haven’t stopped since then. It is now 2021 and we’re about to start a subscription service to cop new designs every month when they come out.