Tom Brady’s last few months have been busy, to say the least.
After he and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were eliminated from the NFL playoffs by the eventual champion L.A. Rams in January, rumors swirled about the 44-year-old quarterback’s future plans. Just a week later, an ESPN report claimed Brady would retire, and after a few days of speculation, he made the news official on February 1. The GOAT calling it a career marked the end of an era and immediately rearranged the league’s power rankings—until he suddenly reversed course on March 13, announcing that he would return for his 23rd season in the NFL.
That’s a wild three months for anyone—but that timeline only covers Brady’s athletic endeavors. He also launched a clothing company, BRADY, back in January after a three-year development cycle with co-founders Jens Grede (co-founder of Skims and other companies) and Dao-Yi Chow (co-founder of streetwear fave Public School).
“I didn’t want to do anything unless we felt we could do something better than what’s out there,” Brady tells Men’s Health of the impetus to create the company bearing his name. “And sometimes you’ve got to think about it a little bit differently and creatively from a branding standpoint. From an actual product function standpoint, I feel like I live a life between my on-field life—essentially I have a uniform—to my off-field life, which I still need A., to look good, but B. I want to be able to perform what I need to do off the field. It’s still a very active life.”
BRADY
Now, barely a week after Brady the player unretired, BRADY the brand is slated to release its second drop. Dubbed the Pliable Performance collection after one of Brady’s most firmly-held training principles, pliability, the new gear will bring two new performance fabrics into the fold: Tough Touch, a tee shirt made from abrasion-resistant fabric, and Cotton Flex, an extra-stretchy, next-gen sweatsuit material.
Pliability refers to Brady’s work with his longtime body coach and TB12 co-founder Alex Guerrero, which the quarterback credits for his remarkable success and longevity. When applying the principle to BRADY’s clothes, the brand hopes to create durable pieces that allow for high levels of performance under pressure.
Chow, who serves as the brand’s Creative Director, shared a few details about the new fabrics on Instagram in a video conversation with Brady. The materials were designed using “this idea of how can fabrics actually work with my body, how is it like a work in progress as I wear it, as I perform in it,” Chow said in the clip. “It gives you sort of this abrasion resistance but it doesn’t sacrifice your movement or your comfort.”
BRADY
While the BRADY brand has arguably one of the most notable pitchmen in the country built right into the company’s name, a new generation up-and-coming college athletes will help to launch the Pliable Performance collection (possible thanks to the new NCAA NIL policy). The group includes USC basketball player Boogie Ellis, UCLA football player Kyle Philips, USC Baseball player Channing Austin, USC football player Domani Jackson, and USC tennis athlete Stefan Dostanic.
Working with college athletes rather than more established endorsees like himself fits Brady’s aims for the brand. “So much [of BRADY] was designed with the thought of how I approach my career,” he says. “I wasn’t always the guy—most people know my story—but I wasn’t the prodigy. I had to really work hard to put myself in a position to succeed. I was behind people in high school, behind people in college, behind them professionally. But I had a lot of goals, and I believed in myself. And I think the person that wears BRADY brand feels very much the same way.”
Brady cites the new pitchmen as kindred spirits—even if he isn’t quite sure that he was the same caliber of athlete in college. “They want to go out and accomplish what their goals are, what their dreams are,” he says. “That would’ve been an amazing thing for me, when I was that age. I wasn’t probably good enough at the time to have a brand reach out to me.” Notably, one of the brand’s launch athletes was University of Michigan QB Cade McNamara—so it might be safe to say that Brady would’ve had some chance at an NIL deal.
BRADY
Age is an inescapable topic for Brady at this point in his career, even when the matter at hand is the newest gear from his clothing line. When next NFL season kicks off on September 8, 2022, he’ll be 45, and the oldest active player in the league. BRADY the brand works with college athletes, while Brady the player is in locker rooms with guys who aren’t much older. But he sees that as an advantage—for his game, his business, and even his home life.
“As much as they think they’re learning for me, I’m learning from my younger teammates,” he says. “I have two young boys, and all my teammates are way closer in age to my kids than they are to me, but that’s very valuable for me because I can learn a lot from that. I can see what the kids are up to these days. It helps me to be a better parent to a degree.”
As he’s learning, Brady is applying some of the same principles he uses for physical training with pliability. He’s under pressure playing football at an unprecedented level for a quarterback in his mid-40s—after leading the league in multiple passing categories last season, he’s beyond most QBs in their mid-30s—but every challenge he’s faced seems to make him more resilient.
That’s what he wants to pass on, both as a training method and a larger life outlook. “I believe that 10 years from now every high school, college, professional organization will have [pliability] as part of their program,” he says. “I think I was probably ahead of everyone else, which is great. But in the second phase of my life to I want to help other people be the best they can be.”
You can bet that wherever Brady finds himself in this next phase of life—whenever that eventually starts, since it won’t be next year—he’ll keep pushing the limits of what’s perceived as “the best.” And he’ll do it wearing his own clothes.
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