Warriors jersey, ASICS collab: How Lewis Brown turned a 10-year NRL career into an Australian fashion empire

After a decade in the NRL, no one is laughing at Lewis Brown who has gone from field to fashion, creating one of Australia’s hottest labels as a love letter to his family, career and culture.

Brown traded an NRL career to become one of Australia’s hottest fashion designers.

When it comes to a footy dressing room, there are few places to hide once you start getting mocked for having a unique taste in fashion.

Now, 20 years after beginning his rugby league journey, no one is laughing at Lewis Brown, who is the face of one of the fastest-growing designer brands in Australia.

“When I played footy, I always dressed differently, and I copped a lot of shit for it,” he said.

“I was more of a sneaker head when I played footy. Then the silhouettes that I was wearing were cardigans and knits, probably brighter colours than most of the boys.

“But that was me. That was Lewis Brown.”

That was his way of expressing who he was.

“To be able to look back on the career I had and then look back what I’m doing now, seeing a lot of the boys support the brand and really rock with it, it’s really humbling,” he said.

Most Saturdays on Oxford Street in Sydney’s affluent suburb of Paddington, you’ll find Brown standing behind a counter instead of a defensive line.

The former Kiwi international and 198-game NRL veteran greets strangers like old teammates — asking how they found the store, which pieces caught their eye, and what brought them in.

“I think I’d just like to be known as a good human,” Brown said.

“At the end of the day, that’s what kind of makes up life.”

DOUBLE TRAGEDY

Both Brown’s father, Bevan, and his grandfather, Garth, took their own lives.

He had complex relationships with both, who also had a passion for fashion, and also had the name Earl, which is Brown’s middle name.

“The crazy thing is my dad was a super styley dude, he was wearing Chuck Taylors, leather pants and denim jackets riding Harley’s before it was all happening,” he said.

“That’s where I might have got my creativity from, but I’m glad that I can heal from that traumatic moment in my life now and heal from it each day.”

Brown enjoyed a 10-year NRL career and was a consistent presence on the New Zealand national team. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

At 16, the Christchurch teenager took a scholarship and left home for the Sydney Roosters.

By 32, he retired from the sport, and threw himself, again, into the deep end — this time with fashion label Earls.

“You can fail at something you want to do — let’s just give it a go,” he said.

“I put all my eggs in one basket with rugby league and I kind of did that with Earls as well. It was either sink or swim.

“And currently we’re swimming.”

On the field, Brown was all work-rate and intent. Off it, he dressed on instinct.

He may not have studied design, but he did more than window shopping when going into stores, online, on Kiwis tours, and footy away trips, on rare days off in Australia.

Earls has become one of Australia’s hottest labels.

Fabrics, appliqués, cuts, the way a cardigan drapes or a knit pops in brighter colours: he absorbed it the same way he learnt a new edge defence — by feel, repetition, curiosity.

When Brown was coming through the NRL, few players were concerned about their brand.

“It was more about the team, not building your own personal profile,” he said.

“Obviously we’re in a day and age now where building your personal profile off the field will help you when you finish your career, it’s something they’re really promoting in the game.

“That just comes with the evolution of the game, technology and life as well.

KIWI JERSEY IN A BOX

The turning point for Brown arrived in a shoebox.

ASICS called and asked him to drop by their Marsden Park office. He assumed they were giving him a product for a shoot. Instead, they offered a collaboration.

A signature shoe built around his eye for detail, and his story.

“That was equivalent to pulling on the Kiwis jumper in this space,” he said.

Brown’s koro — his mum’s father, Wiremu, who helped raise him — wore ASICS his whole life, and he was responsible for introducing a young Lewis into rugby league.

So Brown designed a trainer that carried a sense of home within it.

The ‘paua shell’, which is the weaving on the outside of the shoe is the ‘inner soul’. And the green colours represent the Pounamu is a stone you find in the south island rivers.

A shoe for many; to Brown, a piece of art — it let him take his culture to the world.

“But the coolest thing about that shoe for me was I got to really dig deep into my Maori heritage and culture and take it, and present it to the world with a piece of art,” he said.

It’s a side his mum had never seen until after rugby league.

“She’s raised this kid, like this boy who’s just all been about rugby league and then all of a sudden she’s seen this new version, this creative side of him,” he said.

“I never thought I was creative, but when I look back on it, the way I dressed, that was me being creative, putting outfits together.

“So to be able to do the shoe and to take my family and my culture on the journey with me, yeah, it was definitely equivalent, in my eyes, to pulling on the Kiwis jersey.”

A SPECIAL LINK

Earls isn’t a mood-board label. It’s a name that carried weight long before it hung above a door in Paddington.

Brown was raised by a single mum who worked three jobs and strong-armed her son into turning up 30 minutes early to training to do extras.

“She was more like a dad than a mum when I was a kid,” Brown said.

Even though she played the traditionally fatherly role in his life, they were best mates.

His relationship with his dad was different.

“He’s a good guy, but he was a useless dad,” he said.

In 2016, after the Kiwis lost the Four Nations final, he was in a hotel lobby with Kiwis legend Shaun Johnson when his sister rang.

His father had taken his own life — Brown’s first confrontation with mental health.

At his father’s funeral he also discovered the silent disease claimed the life of his grandfather as well. The men shared a middle name with him: Earl.

For years, he’d dissociated from it. Two years after his dad died, Brown retired from the NRL on a Wednesday. By Monday, he’d registered Earls Collection.

The name wasn’t the only thing his father and grandfather left him.

For five years after his father’s passing, Brown lived with suicidal ideation, which left him fraught with the inevitability that he would follow in their footsteps.

A condition which was only healed by Brown counselling someone who had made an attempt on their own life.

Brown honours his family through his brand Earls.

Now he uses the brand as a tribute to his father.

“I guess you could call it a love letter,” he said.

“But it’s more of a forgiving letter, if anything.

“I’d like to think he’s looking down and he’s proud.

“He’d just be laughing up there thinking, ‘This kid that I had, and had given this crazy name to — he’s gone off and run with a clothing brand.’”

MORE THAN A SHOP

Brown’s hole-in-the-wall on Oxford Street, and the entire brand, is more than retail. He runs it like a rugby league team, the only thing he knew before stepping into the fashion world.

From the start, Brown vowed to treat Earls like a full-time job, and not a hobby. The attention to detail that once went into video review and set plays now lives in fabric weights and fits.

Though, since the shoe fits, he never forgets where he came from.

Brown opened the first brick-and-mortar Earls store in June of 2025.

“As a retiree, it’s still my job to be a role model towards the current players, to show you can be more than an athlete,” he said.

“We’re programmed at a young age to be this one thing. A lot of boys, when they retire, struggle to find their purpose and identity.”

“I still miss the game; I’m still finding my feet with the transition. But you can do other things. It doesn’t have to be clothing — it can be anything you want.”

And even while loving the industry and flourishing in it, Brown can’t lie when asked which industry is tougher.

“I’d happily jump back on a rugby league field,” he said.

Brown designed the Warriors jersey worn by the team in Round 12 against the Raiders.

“This is a tough industry, it’s not cut out for everyone.

“That’s why you see a lot of brands start up and fall over. You’ve got to be a certain type of person; you’ve got to be a hard worker.”

Still in the early stages of his new career, Brown is ready to keep growing the brand, revealing his stint with ASICS is only just beginning, with more collaborations set for 2026.

He also helped design the Warriors’ ‘Dear Warrior’ jersey this year, and will return to that space again next season.