Designing Headwear and Gloves for Levi’s and Dockers
Belts and wallets were only part of the job. I also designed headwear and gloves for Levi’s and Dockers, from baseball caps and ivies to trappers, beanies and leather gloves, and took each style from concept CAD through tech pack and factory sample.
Earlier workFrom my years as a hands-on designer at Randa, before I moved into leading the team.
At a glance
The work
Fall headwear and glove lines for two Levi Strauss & Co. brands, made to sell next to our belts, wallets and bags.
What I did
Built the seasonal stories, drew the concept CADs and followed each style through tech packs and factory samples to the line review.
The range
7Hat shapes in a single Levi’s fall line, plus knit, suede, leather and denim gloves.
Every season started with a story
Each Dockers season was built around a few stories. Big Sur and Lake Tahoe set the colors, materials and mood, and every hat and glove in the line had to belong to one of them.
The story boards opened the line book at the first review with the brand, so the line read as a point of view before anyone saw a single hat.
The herringbone ivy, from CAD to sample
The Dockers Wool Herringbone Flat Top Ivy shows how a style moved through development. It started as a CAD in four colorways for the first review. The tech pack then set the crown fabric and lining for each colorway, the debossed rubber logo patch, and the twill tape and sweatband branding inside the hat. Each colorway was matched to herringbone swatches from our mills, with a note to the factory to source those qualities or similar at the right cost. By the Mid Point review, the CADs were real samples.
Caps to trappers
Across the two brands, the lines covered baseball and camp caps, ivies, fedoras, bucket hats, trappers and beanies. Levi’s leaned into washed denim, corduroy and patches. Dockers stayed dressier, with wool plaids, herringbones and tweeds.
More from the line booksSix more pages, from concept to sample
Gloves, from knit to leather
Gloves sat in the same cold weather line, so they shared its materials: wool with leather palms, washed denim with sherpa lining, buffalo plaid with a knit cuff. Each concept sheet is tagged with the factory developing it, which kept the hand-off clear once samples were underway.
Finished samplesGloves from the line books
