He grew up playing football in Bradenton and now designs fashions for NFL players
Brent Yancy, a 28-year-old rising fashion designer from Sarasota, Florida, spent much of his life dreaming of becoming an NFL star.
But when that dream didn’t materialize, he decided to focus on his plan B.
Yancy, who’s a designer, stylist, image consultant and “all-around fashion guru,” may not have made it to Draft Day, but his clothing brand, 3RD, has made its way into many professional football stadiums.
His designs are worn by several of today’s NFL players, like Ryquell Armstead of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Keith Kirkwood of the New Orleans Saints.
In 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, he opened 3RD We+Re Create Studios at 5205 26th St. W., unit C in Bradenton, where he sells his own clothing collection. He also sells other exclusive brands such as BAPE and Supreme as well as vintage clothes and new-release and rare sneakers.
He opened the store in the same city where his NFL dreams first started to come alive.
Yancy attended Manatee High School and was a solid defensive presence on the Hurricanes’ varsity football team when they won the Class 7A Florida high school football championship in 2011 and were ranked number one in the nation.
Yancy said he wanted to bring the art of fashion back to the place where he was raised.
“I feel like fashion isn’t valued much here being a sports town, so I wanted to show the youth how you can build a successful fashion brand from the ground up.”
3RD, is bold, full of color, and tells a story about his personal experiences.
“I believe life is limitless,” he said. “So when I design, I have no limits I take over the whole piece of fabric and create a mural.”
His fall collection, which he debuted in November 2022, has a ’70s vintage flare, featuring bell-bottom pants, silk button-down shirts, oversized shirts, and zip-ups for a high-fashion look.
He designs his collections with athletes in mind; everything from the fabrics to the fit was made for them to feel “cozy” in. That’s something Yancy said was inspired by the pregame warmups he used to wear as a player.
A different route
Yancy didn’t originally plan on a fashion career, but he believes it was a divinely orchestrated route designed by God.
After leaving Webber International University, where he received a football scholarship, Yancy transferred schools and decided to focus on playing football and getting a criminal justice degree at Bethune-Cookman University.
He said he left Webber to play football at a Division I School.
But he lost sight in one of his eyes in 2016. He had a large cataract growing over his eye, and his doctor told him he was the youngest patient he’d treated.
“I went blind in my eye during college, and I knew for a fact that no one would hire me in the criminal justice field with one eye.” He said, “Being a young Black male, you have to have other credentials, and now that I have one eye, I knew then that I was at the bottom of the totem pole.”
Then a new idea entered his mind, and that year, he launched his fashion brand 3RD online.
He named his brand 3RD for many reasons, one being that it symbolizes the awakening of Brent Yancy the fashion designer and the retirement of Brent Yancy the football player.
“I had to open my third eye; I was so stuck, I was stuck on football, stuck on the NFL,” he explained. “I thought I’d make it to the league, then maybe work on clothes, but it was so much deeper than that, a deeper calling.”
Among fashion’s who’s who
Within six months of focusing solely on his clothing line, Yancy was invited to attend New York Fashion Week by Rashad Benton, another Manatee County native and fashion writer.
“But I had to get eye surgery. I didn’t get to go to New York Fashion Week,” Yancy said.
Rather than taking that as a missed opportunity, it was actually a push into his destiny.
“After I receive that invite, I was done pursuing any other career, fashion is my calling,” he said.
Two years later, Benton would present Yancy with another opportunity to put himself and his brand in front of the who’s who of the fashion industry with a write-up in Council Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
“All the top fashion designers are members of the CFDA: Pharrell Williams, the late Virgil Abloh, Jerry Lorenzo, Kanye West,” he said. “Being recognized by one of the biggest fashion organizations in the world was big with me being from a small town.”
Limitless designs
“You can tell I don’t have somebody looking over my shoulder and saying, ‘Hey, that’s a little much;’ my designs are limitless,” Yancy said.
He admits that most people may not get or understand his designs at first.
“Most people might not like it, but they want to know how I came up with the designs or why I chose certain fabrics; I think it just really catches their eye.”
However, his bold designs are true to his own artistic expression and are composed of many life experiences, which he says is what his customers are buying.
“Experience, you get to experience what I’ve been through and the places I’ve traveled”
Yancy said he pours his personal sorrows and life lessons, and travels into every piece of clothing he designs.
One and done
“I’ll travel to Spain, get all my inspiration there, and put it into one piece,” he said. “Then I’ll drop the piece and won’t drop it anymore, so it’s a one-time collector’s piece.”
All of Yancy’s clothes and shoes that he releases are one-of-a-kind, which helps create a buzz around his line. He now drops a limited amount of each item to meet growing demands.
But once it’s gone, it’s gone.
“I just released my first collection of sneakers and sold 156 pairs, in four days,” he said. “Once these are sold out, that’s it; I’ll never sell this design again, and people will have to wait for the next collection.”
He has released a total of nine collections since launching his fashion brand in 2016.
The popup fashion scene
Opening up a store in his hometown was a personal goal, and he wanted to show younger kids that you can come from Bradenton and be successful. But he has had to travel outside of the city to grow as there isn’t really a market for his brand in the area yet.
“My brand is for younger people, which just aren’t here yet,” he said. “Bradenton is an older town, but when older people from here find out about my clothing line, oh they love it. They do love it.”
A lot of his clients come from fashion pop-up events which he travels to attend in Miami, Atlanta and Texas, and many of the events are invite-only.
Participating in pop-ups has helped his brand grow fast and organically, allowing him to interact with his customers more personally. He could meet many more people at an event instead of the few he’d meet from local store traffic.
“If you just stay local, you’ll trap yourself,” he said. “Especially in this field, you don’t want to be local; you want to be worldwide.”
Pop-up fashion events have been growing in popularity as curated creative spaces where artists, athletes, fashion designers, social media influences and musicians meet to share their creations with one another and be around like-minded people and sell their products.
Future plans
Yancy plans to open a second store in Sarasota with a space large enough to accommodate his creative studio.
“I want to open a big design studio next, a place where every designer or artist can have an environment to create and connect,” Yancy said. “A place where kids can come and design a sneaker for a few hours and just be in a creative space and mindset that is not part of a school where you have to enroll as a student.”
Since starting a brand of his own, Yancy said he has helped people in the Bradenton area start brands of their own, eight of which have enjoyed instant success.
“I was telling them what to do, and their products started selling out,” he said. “They were seeing the success of it, but the thing is, it turned into being about the money.”
Yancy said, “If you make it about the money, you’ll be out of the loop quicker than you think. It’s not about the money, and you can’t do it for money or for other people; you have to do it for yourself.”
He also plans to use the space in his second location as a permanent pop-up event location where Black entrepreneurs can set up shop and gain experience running a physical business, not relying only on digital sales.
Fashionistas interested in purchasing one of his creations can go to his store, 3RD We+Re Create Studios, located at 5205 26th St. W., unit C in Bradenton or shop online at https://www.3rdexperience.com/
This story was originally published January 2, 2023 at 5:50 AM.
