Justin Bieber steps out in NZ singlet
Published: 12:55PM Tuesday August 14, 2012 Source: ONE News
The owner of a New Zealand fashion label is gearing up for a rush of orders after international teen heart-throb Justin Bieber was photographed wearing one of his stylised "New Zealand" basketball singlets.
The photos of Bieber wearing the singlet while accompanied by girlfriend Selena Gomez are doing the rounds of social media and fan sites today and JAM Streetwear director and designer Rob Fisher, who only launched his low-key label two weeks ago, is bracing for the response.
"I woke up this morning and the phone was going berserk," said Fisher. "I'll be putting in an emergency order tonight, because of the requests we're getting.
"When we launched, we had no realistic ambitions up front, except to sell our stock. To go in this direction now is interesting - we might have to get some more mature processes in place to deal with the interest.
Bieber visited New Zealand last month to promote his latest album, Believe, visiting Auckland's Starship Hospital and playing a special show for competition winners at The Cloud.
Fisher arranged for him to receive the singlet through ZM radio host Polly Gillespie, who interviewed the star during his visit, never suspecting Bieber would ever actually wear it.
"We asked Polly to give him one on the off-chance he would wear it," said Fisher. "He gets given every label of clothing in the world, but today, he decided to wear this one."
JAM Streetwear is described as "high quality basketball singlets that represent the NZ neighbourhoods we grew up in" and was formed in response to similar clothing lines in the United States.
"It's great to wear American-style singlets in this style with 'Chicago' or 'New York', but there's no real affinity with Kiwis. We w! anted a theme that represented the small towns and neighbourhoods we were from."
That sentiment must have touched a chord with Bieber - or maybe all his other clothes were in the wash today.
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