KidSuper’s Colm Dillane lives larger than life – it’s what he’s been doing for the last 16 years. From County Cork to Williamsburg, that world’s getting bigger with this new eight-piece football-inspired collaboration with Jameson Whiskey, and a helping hand from his friend, Colombian megastar J Balvin.

On a rooftop in his (mostly) self-built clubhouse/creative studio, friends, family and fans gather in tight, excited huddles to watch fashion brand KidSuper’s creative mastermind Colm Dillane take on Colombian music legend J Balvin in a pre-World Cup friendly. The amiable competition ends with a ‘ooooh’ and ‘ahhhh’-soundtracked top bins challenge. The teams were sporting the two disparate jerseys from the eight-piece Bottled by Kidsuper collection, designed entirely by Colm. It was a multicultural celebration of football, style and community – even if in the end, there could only be one winner…spoiler alert: Team Colm won. Nonetheless, it was a fun, anything-goes event extravaganza done the KidSuper x Jameson way: cheer, triumph and, well, whiskey. 

This felt like a moment 200 years in the making. Bringing together a match-made-in-distillery trio of legacymakers, with this campaign, the goal was football – and specifically, the art of unity that the game brings. The collab does what Colm is best suited to help carry the torch for – stateside and on Irish home turf: celebrate football’s unparalleled ability to unify people globally. 

Rather than make the whistle their starting point, they agreed on a better medium: a shared Irish heritage and the desire to build a strong legacy. “My father’s Irish, and his whole family’s in Ireland, so I got to visit the distillery and go there with my cousin and my uncle, because I don’t see them that often, so they met me there, and now it’s really cool,” Colm says. So, with this collection, he mixes his passion for football and niche experiences like visiting age-old distilleries in County Cork’s Midleton in his native Ireland into one (huge) melting pot, blending sport, streetwear and art. But the one taking the forefront now is his heritage. “My dad’s the only one in his family who doesn’t live in Ireland, so I’m always trying to get reconnected there,” he shares, elaborating on the collection’s growing sentimental value. “My name is Colm, so it’s a very Irish name. When I’m in America, I’m super Irish, and when I’m in Ireland, I’m the dumb Yank. So now, this is giving me more credit as an Irish-er.” And because of that, he wanted to offer more to this collaboration than an on-brand line of merchandise. “I didn’t want it to feel surface-level or gimmicky,” the designer admits. “There are a lot of references people expect you to make, and we kept trying to push past the obvious choices and find something that felt more real.”

As far as ‘corporate collaborations’ go, as KidSuper coins them: “I think ours is really good.” For him, the formula for a successful brand partnership is simple: “I never want KidSuper to disappear inside a collaboration. The best ones feel like two friend groups meeting each other for the first time,” which ironically mirrors his relationship with friend and collaborator, J Balvin. Serving as Jameson’s latest Global Brand Ambassador, it was too fitting an occasion for the two creative pioneers not to cheers to. “Being able to collaborate with J Balvin is incredible because we just partnered on a team called Super Ninos for Baller League, and Balvin was one of the first people to ever support KidSuper, so bringing us back together felt like a dream come true,” Dillane says. “We both didn’t really know about it until we were working together. We were like, ‘Oh my god, what are the chances?’ So that was great.” 

For the Colombian singer-songwriter, the loyalty runs both ways. “I met him when he was an upcoming artist, when he had a small store. I heard about him, I went to see what he does, and I’ve supported him since day one,” Balvin says as we sit down to chat under the green glow of the Jameson logo, upstairs in Colm’s playhouse. “We’ve supported each other for a long time – he was the second person who did my wardrobe for my tour when I started in the United States.”

And it’s that clear overlap and shared, youthful zeal between fashion, music and football that gives the collaboration its kickstart. “Fashion has always been part of culture, and especially with music. You can tell if someone is calmer or takes risks – someone who is not afraid of anything. That’s what I’m most passionate about: expressing yourself without talking,” he says, sporting the whiskey barrel-toned varsity-style leather bomber jacket – an apt fit pick for the record-breaking musician. 

But with this range of pieces, it’s not just about being fit for the occasion, but being fit for purpose. Across it, football nostalgia gets filtered through KidSuper’s offbeat sentimentalism: floral jerseys inspired by his grandmother’s couch, pink checkerboard graphics and vintage-feeling, charcoal track sets with burgundy accents that feel like a garm from a teenage memory. “Football jerseys are emotional objects already,” Colm says of the pieces the collection centres on. “People keep them forever, pass them down, wear them when they’re happy, wear them when they’re heartbroken. I liked the idea of treating them almost like souvenirs from memories that didn’t happen yet.”

And while all roads lead to the pitch with this collection, the spirit of the brand remains impossible to miss. There is history in the detailing, a humour in the styling and an effortlessness that stops the clothes from ever feeling overly polished or self-serious. “We were obviously inspired by the ‘90s and early 2000s soccer kids,” the Brooklyn-native enthuses. “We tried to make a collaboration that, outside of the two brands, would be desirable. That’s sometimes difficult when you’re working with brands, but for sure, [with] this one, we found the perfect balance of KidSuper, Jameson and football.”

“Both worlds care a lot about details, but the best versions never feel overly calculated,” he offers. “The magic is when something feels effortless, even though a crazy amount of work went into it.” But that work doesn’t feel so extreme when the goal is fun, which it often is in the world of KidSuper – you just have to look at the universe he’s spinning to see it. 

For all of KidSuper’s charisma, what makes the brand resonate is its humanity. Beneath the tailoring, the spectacle and the ever-expanding universe Colm has built sits something surprisingly earnest: a belief that fashion should just feel joyful. “I think life is funnier than fashion sometimes allows it to be,” Colm admits. “I love craftsmanship and tailoring and all of that, but clothes should have charm and personality and not feel too precious.” Maybe that’s why football works so naturally inside the KidSuper world. At its best, the game has never really been about perfection – it’s about the emotion, the community and absolute chaos. The same things, it turns out, that make great clothes too.

The Bottled by KidSuper collection is available to shop here.

Words – Aswan Magumbe