HBO Max‘s womens’ soccer documentary LFG is taking on the sport’s reckoning with women’s rights and equal pay. Multidisciplinary artist, streetwear designer and creative director Laci Jordan worked with HBO Max and LFG to create a unique gifting experience described as one “designed to break barriers and shatter expectations.” The experience comes with a unique unboxing moment designed to symbolize the themes present in the documentary and the overall struggle for equal pay.
Jordan, who has worked with Jordan Brand, Nike, Footlocker, and Calvin Klein, spoke with Shadow And Act about her partnership with HBO Max and LFG and what the social justice fight outlined in the documentary means to her.
“For this jersey, it was a mixture of being inspired by the movement of sport, the fight for equality for women in soccer, and equity for women overall,” she said. “Each patch represents a call to action and they all align back to the key messages of the film,” she said.
Jordan explained that what people view as her signature aesthetic “really just naturally how I see the world.”
“A pillar of my work is rooted in the representation of women. As a Black woman, as a Black acritst, equality is really really really big for me from multiple standpoints. Those experiences tie into making a project like this because I can draw from my own experiences of not being paid equally, not being treated the same way as my peers who don’t look like me,” she said. “I can also reference a project I did for Bleacher Report which was very similar in nature of creating a soccer jersey that represents the inequalities going on. For that, in particular, it was not even just looking at the lack of equal pay, but the lack of diversity and really researching why that exists.”
She explained that the inequalities in women’s soccer, and soccer in general, starts economically.
“…It’s really rooted in the pay as you play method,” she said. “The sport is expensive so a lot of people can’t afford to get involve and compete even at the younger level, so those different constructs seep into the sport even if you do get to the professional level and then we’re where we are now with fighting for equal pay and equal due. You also have to take it back to the root and that is how people are even integrated into the sport or given the availability to play the sport.”
Jordan said that the LFG gifting experience is relevant to the times we’re living in because the fight for equal pay, including the lawsuit U.S. women’s soccer recently–and unsatisfactorily–settled with the U.S. Soccer Federation regarding gender discrimination and unequal pay, “is still fresh.”
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“The lawsuit, the fight for equal pay, this isn’t something that happened a thousand years ago, it’s very current. There’s no way the project can’t be symbolic of the times we’re in now,” she said.
“I also have to look at all the events that have happened in the last year and a half. Looking at the fight for Black lives, looking at the fight for justice, and I think in general, people have finally gotten to the point where they’re like, ‘Hey not only do we need to listen to what’s going on, but we have to speak up,'” she continues. “We have to say what we want, demand what we deserve, and demand justice in whatever way that needs to happen. I think it’s very much a society right now, especially for people of color and women, where we’re not taking any shit and we’re demanding what we need and what we want. The time’s been up, but the time is now.”
LFG is now streaming on HBO Max.
Trey Mangum contributed to this report.