Waraire Boswell was a fashion designer known for his bespoke designs for NBA icons like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant (1978–2020).
Waraire Boswell’s ebroa
Boswell began his fashion career by making his own clothing. Standing 6’7” with a slender, athletic build, he found it difficult to find off-the-rack clothes that fit him well: Standard sizes were too short, and big-and-tall sizes were made for a stockier build. As a young man, Boswell worked for talent agencies and wanted to dress as well as his colleagues did without spending too much money on custom clothing, so he learned to create his own.
Boswell launched his namesake fashion label in 2003, but he didn’t confine his designs to tall sizes. In fact, much of his focus was on creating custom suits for athletes, musicians, and other notables. He was especially known for dressing the stars of the NBA, including LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Blake Griffin, Tyson Chandler, and Chris Bosh.
In addition to dressing the NBA athletes, Boswell created clothing for Jay-Z, Will Smith, Ellen DeGeneres, football player Colin Kaepernick, and many others. He also developed a line of ready-to-wear clothing. His label’s mascot was a terrier, and his signature pieces included the Lear suit, a fleece set styled like a business suit but with comfort in mind.
On building a good menswear wardrobe
“Always start with the basics. In reference to suiting, black suit, navy suit, grey suit, khaki suit. In terms of shirts, make sure you have plenty of white shirts. 80% of my wardrobe is white shirts, they go with everything. And in reference to casual, that’s more of an open-end. Once you have your basics in any discipline, then you can add other things to that as it applies to suits. You have all the colors I just mentioned, then you can get a pinstripe, then you can get a houndstooth, then you can get a glen plaid and window pane, you can do all that, but you should never start with those colors.” —from a 2014 interview for A Life in the Day of Andrea
