Made To Suit

This weekend we awarded the rights to design and produce my Christmas Eve outfit to Nike. I was fitted for the suit on Saturday in Beaverton and by today I was trying on my new outfit. It is fantastic!


My suit from the past couple of years was good but I couldn't seem to keep my temperature regulated. As I changed climates, I would find myself either cold or uncomfortably warm. I never could seem to find just the right temperature. So my staff decided it was time to once again update my Christmas Eve suit. We conducted a pretty thorough initial search and then invited 5 different vendors to make a request for proposal. The finalists came down to Nike and Under Armor. Under Armor had a great story to tell and some fantastic marketing. Everything sounded fantastic but in the final round where we actually sampled product, it was clear that their design & technology was sub-par. The Under Armor product was clearly inferior to Nike's. They were all hype. Their executives weren't the most pleasant to deal with either. Arrogant. And a quick background check, which in retrospect we should have conducted earlier in the selection process, showed that a few of them were on the naughty list. We just can't afford to be doing business with folks on the naughty list. That definitely would be a mistake... and certainly a PR faux pas.


But let me tell you about this suit. I mean... wow! The base layer is the new moisture wicking Nike Pro Combat compression shorts & long-sleeve shirt. I have color choices of "North Pole Ice" (which I call silver),"Arctic Snow" (white), or "Santa Red" (which is my traditional crimson red). The middle layer is a simple, light-weight dri-FIT fleece... upper only. It comes in the same color selection as the compression gear on the base layer. At the moment, I'm leaning toward wearing the "Ice" color for both the base and middle layer.

The outer layer is made from a unique light weight, breathable, moisture repelling material recently developed and pending patent by Nike's ACG division. The entire outer layer... pants and coat both combined weigh less than half a kilogram, despite having the thermal protection equivalent of -75 degrees Celsius This is a top secret material so I can't tell you much more about it. There is only one color selection... my traditional crimson red. I was emphatic that it visually appear like my traditional suit that I have been wearing since the 1950s even though it is far advanced technically beyond what I had back when I first started wearing this particular silhouette. It even has the white fur* trim around the collar and on the cuffs of the jacket and pants. *Note that it is not really fur... its a faux fur designed & manufactured specifically for me. It is so good, even some of the most knowledgeable furriers would not know its fake fur.

Oh, and did I mention that the jacket material is largely made from recycled plastic bottles? Well, it is. The folks at Nike utilize a technique that turns the plastic in your average water bottle into polyester. The polyester is then one of the components of this new material. I learned that they are using this material for many of their products. In fact, just one category of their apparel this next year will use 13 million plastic bottles. That's 13 million plastic bottles that will not be going to the landfill.

They supplied the boots as well. The boots, in traditional black, were designed and manufactured by the team at Cole Haan and it features Nike Air. Extremely comfortable and warm.

The folks at Nike, as did the Under Armor designers, originally wanted me to radically over-haul the suit visually. They wanted to take advantage of my athletic build... ok, maybe that's exaggerating a bit... but they did want to create a sleeker, more fitted, more modern image. While some of my staff agreed with that approach, I just didn't feel it was time to change the look. Maybe in 2050 but not before then. I think, particularly given the current state of affairs in the world, that people want and need some steadfast traditions. The team at Nike heard that. That's another reason I picked Nike. The UA team came back in the second round trying to push their more modern, more aggressive design, even trying to change the outer layer color scheme to a forest green... despite the fact I had made it clear I wanted to maintain tradition. Not Nike... after that first round, they presented everything in the traditional style (even removing the Swoosh... its not visible anywhere on the exterior of the outfit) but continued to introduce new functional features that addressed concerns & needs they had heard from me in the previous rounds. Clearly they were focused on meeting my needs. And they did. I am very happy with my new suit.

I am saving the suit though for Christmas Eve so don't expect to see it on me when you visit at the mall or catch me at some event this Christmas season. But don't try to stay up and see it either... cause if you are still awake on Christmas Eve when I come by, I may have to skip your house. You'll just have to wait and see the pictures in the Nike Press Release.

Ok... its time for me to rush off to dinner with Mrs. Claus before my next staff meeting. I hope you had a great weekend. Not long to go now until Christmas!