BEYOND THE FAIRWAY: RADMOR x GQ

Long before there was RADMOR, there was golf.

Bob and I met as teammates at the University of Washington in the early 1990s, where we spent countless hours playing, practicing and occasionally wondering why the clothes we wore to do both never felt particularly interesting. We talked, as college roommates tend to do, about what we might do differently someday, never imagining it would take nearly thirty years, two very different careers and a return to Seattle before we would finally have the opportunity to find out.

Bob stayed close to the game, competing professionally for more than six years on the Nationwide, Canadian and Asian Tours. My life took me to New York and into fashion, where I spent more than two decades building Paper Denim & Cloth, Earnest Sewn and 3x1, along with serving as CEO and Creative Director of Evisu.

For most of those years, my world was denim.

I became fascinated by the things that make clothing worth caring about: fabric, fit, proportion, construction, wash and the way a garment becomes more personal the longer someone owns it. Denim taught me that the best clothes aren't necessarily the ones that demand the most attention. They're often the pieces that become part of your life, that get better with time and that you instinctively reach for again and again.

Years later, those same ideas would find their way back to golf.

A RELATIONSHIP THAT STARTED BEFORE RADMOR

Our connection to GQ actually goes back much further than RADMOR.

Years before Bob and I launched the brand, GQ invited me to sit down as a denim expert and break down the way celebrities were wearing jeans, looking closely at fit, proportion, wash and the small details that can completely change how a pair of pants looks.

At the time, my world was denim.

I had spent years building Paper Denim & Cloth, Earnest Sewn and 3x1, thinking obsessively about fabric, construction and the relationship between clothing and the person wearing it.

Golf was still something I loved deeply, but it had not yet become part of my professional life.

Looking back now, there is something satisfying about the continuity.

GQ first knew me through denim and menswear. Years later, the publication would begin recognizing RADMOR for many of the same principles that shaped my earlier work: fit, quality, construction, proportion, materials and the belief that performance should never come at the expense of good design.

The category changed.

The questions really didn't.

Watch Scott Morrison break down celebrity denim for GQ

COMING BACK TO GOLF

When Bob and I finally started RADMOR in Seattle in 2020, we weren't interested in simply adding another golf brand to an already crowded landscape.

We had spent most of our lives around the game and watched golf apparel evolve into an increasingly predictable category. Performance had improved enormously, but technical fabrics, familiar silhouettes and a heavy reliance on virgin polyester had also created a certain sameness.

We wondered whether there might be another way.

Could we bring some of what I had learned from fashion and denim back into golf? Could we combine it with Bob's experience playing the game professionally? Could a polo perform through 18 holes and still be something you genuinely wanted to wear afterward? Could golf pants be considered with the same attention to fit, proportion and fabric as the best contemporary menswear?

And could we make more thoughtful choices about what those clothes were made from?

Those questions became the foundation of RADMOR.

We never wanted to reject golf tradition. We love the game far too much for that.

We simply wanted to contribute something new to it.

That is why seeing RADMOR recognized by GQ years later has felt particularly meaningful.

RECONSIDERING THE GOLF POLO

GQ has featured RADMOR within its coverage of the best golf shirts and polos, including our Hudson Recycled Vintage Polo among its recommendations.

Read GQ's guide to the Best Golf Shirts for Men

The Hudson represents much of what we hoped RADMOR could become.

The polo may be the most familiar garment in golf, but familiarity doesn't mean there isn't room to reconsider it. We approach the category less as traditional technical sportswear and more as contemporary menswear, thinking about texture, pattern, proportion, color and how a garment should feel long after someone walks off the eighteenth green.

Performance still matters, of course. Golf demands freedom of movement, comfort and clothing capable of adapting to hours spent outdoors.

But golfers don't stop being themselves when they finish playing.

We want the clothes to belong to the rest of their lives as naturally as they belong to the game.

Explore RADMOR Men's Polos

A LIFETIME OF THINKING ABOUT PANTS

GQ has also recognized RADMOR within its coverage of the best golf pants, including the James Pleated Crop Pant among its selections.

Read GQ's guide to the Best Golf Pants

That recognition carries a slightly more personal significance for me.

I've spent a large part of my adult life thinking about pants.

At Paper Denim & Cloth, Earnest Sewn and later 3x1, I learned how extraordinarily complicated something seemingly simple can be. Rise, proportion, fabric, drape, pocket placement and construction all matter, as does something harder to quantify: the way a garment changes once a person actually begins living in it.

Those lessons didn't disappear when we began designing for golf.

If anything, the physical demands of the game made them more interesting.

Golf pants have historically been approached as performance equipment first and clothing second. With styles like the James, we wanted to challenge that assumption, creating something that moves naturally through a golf swing while still having the proportion, character and ease of a pant you would choose to wear almost anywhere.

Seeing GQ recognize that approach years after first inviting me to talk about denim feels like a particularly satisfying evolution.

The materials changed. The context changed. Eventually, even the game changed.

The obsession with making a great pair of pants never really did.

GOLF, THROUGH A WIDER LENS

One of the things we love most about where golf finds itself today is how many different influences have entered the conversation.

Fashion, music, architecture, art, travel and vintage sportswear now sit comfortably alongside traditions that have defined the game for generations. Younger golfers are discovering it through entirely different doors, while those of us who have played most of our lives are being reminded that respecting tradition doesn't require standing still.

Our own influences have always come from well beyond golf.

New York and the Pacific Northwest. European menswear and vintage American sportswear. Modernist architecture and graphic design. Old photographs of Palmer, Player and Trevino. The clothes we grew up wearing and the pieces we still search for years after they disappeared.

RADMOR is where many of those references eventually found one another.

Golf simply gave them somewhere to meet.

Always designed to be worn, well, beyond. Beyond the course. Beyond expectations.

MATERIALS, WITH PURPOSE

The way clothing looks has always mattered to us, but so does what it's made from.

One of the questions that ultimately pushed Bob and me to start RADMOR was surprisingly simple: Why had a game played almost entirely outdoors become so dependent on virgin polyester?

Polyester performs remarkably well. It's lightweight, durable, moisture-managing and easy to care for, all qualities that make sense in performance apparel.

We never believed performance was the problem.

We simply wondered whether newly produced, petroleum-based polyester always needed to be the answer.

Where technical performance requires synthetic fibers, we've increasingly chosen recycled alternatives. An average Taylor Recycled Performance Polo, for example, incorporates the equivalent of approximately 14 recycled plastic bottles into its fabric, giving existing plastic another useful life while reducing our dependence on newly produced polyester.

Elsewhere, we work with premium and organic Pima cotton, TENCEL, merino wool and other carefully selected fibers, choosing materials according to what we believe each garment should feel like, how it should perform and how we hope it will age.

Learn more about RADMOR and our approach to modern golf apparel

We're also careful not to pretend any of this is perfect.

No piece of clothing is without impact, and sustainability is far more complicated than calling one fiber good and another bad. Our responsibility is to keep asking better questions, make better choices where we can and create clothing worthy of being kept.

Can we use less newly produced material?

Can we make something better?

Can we make it last longer?

Can we design a garment someone will still want to wear years from now?

Because perhaps the most sustainable piece of clothing is ultimately the one you never want to throw away.

FULL CIRCLE

There is something wonderfully circular about all of this.

I grew up playing golf in Palm Springs and came to Seattle on a golf scholarship. Golf introduced me to Bob, and together we spent years talking about a clothing company we had absolutely no idea how to start.

Then life took us in different directions.

Bob pursued professional golf. I went to New York and spent more than two decades learning how clothes are made, building brands and becoming increasingly obsessed with materials, craftsmanship and sustainability.

Along the way, GQ invited me to talk about jeans.

Years later, Bob and I finally came back to the idea we first imagined as college teammates and created RADMOR.

And now GQ is talking about our golf clothes.

There's something about that progression that means more to me than simply seeing our name on another "best of" list.

It connects two parts of my life that once seemed completely separate.

The kid who loved golf.

The designer who became obsessed with making clothes.

It turns out they were probably headed toward the same place all along.

Today, RADMOR remains a small, independent Seattle brand. We're still learning, still refining and still trying to make each collection better than the one before it.

Recognition from GQ doesn't change the work.

But it does make us appreciate the journey.

More than thirty years after Bob and I first wondered whether golf clothes could be different, we're finally getting the chance to find out.

And we're still just getting started.