The original design had the argyle stripe only part way down the sides of the shorts. PHOTO BY MATT GOAD
Matt Goad
Alexander Julian, Chapel Hill-based designer who originally put the argyle on Tar Heel uniforms more than 30 years ago, says he’d be willing to tackle the uniforms again, but added his new idea would have to include the argyle in some fashion.
Julian, a UNC alumnus and Chapel Hill native, changed Carolina athletics forever when he added the argyle design to the men’s basketball uniforms before the 1991-92 season.
Tar Heel Coach Dean Smith called Julian personally to ask the award-winning men’s apparel designer—and still a local store owner —to tackle a redesign of his team’s uniforms in the early ’90s.
Julian had impressed Smith with his original concept of the purple and teal Charlotte Hornets uniforms in 1988 and the designer was in London when he got Smith’s call in spring 1990.
“Dean Smith was a god to me,” Julian said in a recent phone interview. “It was like having God on the phone asking for new halos for the archangels.” Julian added that he quickly started to feel the pressure of getting the new threads right, “If I screwed it up I couldn’t go home again.”
Davis Moore, a salesperson at Julian’s men’s store on Franklin Street, where there is a display recognizing the redesign, said customers of a certain age have long known about Julian’s connection to the uniforms, but many younger ones do not.
Julian’s salesperson Davis Moore holds the placard recognizing Chapel Hill-based designer and store owner Alexander Julian’s redesign of the UNC men’s basketball uniforms. Signed by legendary Coach Dean Smith, the autograph reads, “Alex—See what you started! Thanks.” PHOTO BY MATT GOAD
“If they’re over 45 they instantly recognize it,” Moore said. “Current students, they know the argyle. They’ve seen it. They just sometimes don’t know where it came from.”
Julian said he didn’t hesitate to say yes to Smith, and he didn’t hesitate to say the same when asked how he would respond if Hubert Davis were to call him and ask him to take on the look again—as long as he could continue the argyle tradition somehow.
But he said he didn’t have any idea how he would change them without sitting down with his team again.
In the original redesign process, Julian and his team came up with 30 different options, and Smith wanted to give an equal say to everyone on the team, down to the guy who washed the uniforms, Julian said. But he got Michael Jordan, who was then wowing the world in the NBA, to weigh in, and everyone else followed MJ’s lead.
Jordan worked out in the prototype, which Julian had made in his size.
The update was tougher than the task of starting from scratch, like he did with the Hornets uniforms, Julian said, because he had less room to work with, but in addition to adding the argyle to the sides, he went with a bit brighter shade of light blue. The old hue showed up as gray on TV, Julian explained.
Julian said he selected the argyle for the same reason he selected the pinstripes and bright colors for the Hornets—because it fit with his clothing line. But also, he explained, “you can look in any men’s fashion magazine and you’ll see argyle. You did 20 years ago, and you will 20 years from now. It’s timeless.”
His original design had the argyle stripe all the way down both sides of the jerseys, but only on part of the sides of the shorts. The shorts now also have argyle part way down the sides to the NC at the bottom.
The 76-year-old continues to design men’s apparel, as well as furniture, and recently moved back to Chapel Hill. In 2015, his youngest son Huston helped him relaunch the Alexander Julian clothing brand.
The elder Julian was born and raised in Chapel Hill, and his father, Maurice, owned a men’s clothing store on Franklin Street when there were seven men’s apparel shops downtown in the 1950s and ’60s, Alexander Julian said. His father figured out that to stand out you had to offer something that no one else had. So he began coming up with his own designs.
Julian opened his own store on Franklin when he was only 19, called Alexander’s Ambition, and followed his father’s example by designing some of the clothes he carried, and eventually launched his popular Colours line, which was carried by department stores all over.
In addition to his redesign of the UNC uniforms and his original design for the Hornets uniforms, he also did a redesign not only of the minor league baseball team uniforms for the Charlotte Knights, but also of their former stadium, winning the American Institute of Architects award for his colorful design with 14 colors of seats. The Heels won the National Championship in 1993, two years after the program launched the new uniforms, proving the argyle to be good luck, and the pattern began to spread throughout UNC athletics.
All Carolina uniforms now have some amount of argyle, according to the men’s basketball communications director, Steve Kirschner. “It began with men’s basketball,” he said, “but the argyle has become an iconic style for Carolina athletics. You see the pattern, you see the Carolina blue, and no matter where you are in the world you know you are watching the Tar Heels.”
A 00 uniform worn by the late Eric Montross in the 1990s used to hang in Julian’s front window on Franklin Street, but they took it down to avoid sun damage. PHOTO BY MATT GOAD
A 2020 edition of sports news website “The Score” ranked the ’90s version of the uniforms fourth on a list of the 100 best sports uniforms, just behind the New York Yankees at third and ahead of the Los Angeles Lakers at fifth. And Julian’s Heels uniforms ranked higher on the list than any other collegiate uniform. Notre Dame’s current football uniforms, at sixth, was the only other college-level uniform in the top ten. (Duke is not on the list.)