BTS star V is including one other main title to his rising vogue portfolio, this time as a world ambassador for sportswear model Champion. The partnership offers V, born Kim Taehyung, a brand new platform to carry his distinctive fashion to a model identified for its athletic roots and enduring streetwear enchantment. It additionally comes as BTS continues one in all its largest years but, with the group’s fifth studio album, “Arirang,” debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in March and the Arirang World Tour promoting out stadiums world wide.
The timing feels particularly becoming for V, whose affect has lengthy prolonged past music. He has beforehand represented luxurious homes together with Celine and Cartier, sat beside Anna Wintour at Celine’s Spring 2026 present in Paris, and introduced customized Celine seems to be to the Arirang tour. Now, with Champion, V is getting into a special nook of vogue, one which feels nearer to the relaxed, on a regular basis fashion that has grow to be simply as recognizable as his red-carpet appearances.
Why Taehyung Selected Champion over One other Luxurious Manufacturers
Champion is just not Celine. That’s totally the purpose. The American sportswear model, based in Rochester, New York, in 1919 and at present owned by Genuine Manufacturers Group, constructed its id on athletic fundamentals, sweatshirts, hoodies, T-shirts, and the reverse weave building that grew to become synonymous with sturdy, unpretentious high quality. It’s the model that outfitted collegiate athletes earlier than streetwear made heritage American sportswear globally fascinating. It’s what V reaches for when he’s not reaching for luxurious.
In his GQ interview printed alongside the marketing campaign launch, V describes the partnership as a pure match. His fashion off obligation, he says, has all the time leaned towards precisely what Champion represents: snug, unfussy, constructed for actual life relatively than presentation. “My fashion is fairly instinctive,” he advised GQ. The model’s FW26 marketing campaign captures that ease. The marketing campaign photos present V in Champion necessities with out the efficiency required by a luxurious vogue shoot, which is exactly the register the True Champion marketing campaign goes for.
Stefani Fleurant, Government Vice President of Advertising and marketing, Sport and Way of life at Genuine Manufacturers Group, put it plainly within the marketing campaign announcement: “V’s artistic imaginative and prescient, international affect, and real connection along with his viewers make him a pure companion for Champion.”
The True Champion Marketing campaign and Who Else Is in It
True Champion is Champion’s most formidable international marketing campaign to this point, designed round creators, athletes, and artists who’re actively redefining cultural boundaries by way of originality relatively than conference. V joins a forged that features Romeo Beckham, musical duo SOFI TUKKER, NBA athlete Kyle Kuzma, Mexican singer Danna Paola, ice hockey participant Megan Keller, Olympic swimmer Bella Sims, and actor Jaalen Greatest. The vary of the lineup is deliberate. Champion is just not positioning itself as a vogue model or a efficiency model solely. It’s positioning itself as a cultural model that belongs throughout disciplines and demographics concurrently.
The FW26 assortment obtainable by way of the marketing campaign spans Champion’s signature athletic and way of life items, together with the reverse-weave sweatshirts and hoodies the model constructed its fame on, alongside newer lifestyle-oriented silhouettes. The gathering is obtainable now by way of Champion and Goal.com, giving it attain {that a} luxurious model partnership merely can not match.
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V on Vogue, Analog Tradition and the Arirang Tour
The GQ interview covers greater than the marketing campaign. V speaks about his relationship with vogue as one thing intuitive relatively than studied, a sensibility that has developed by way of publicity and intuition relatively than formal research or deliberate building. He discusses analog tradition and the actual enchantment of issues that require persistence: vinyl information, movie pictures, and the physicality of objects that push again towards the velocity of latest life.
He additionally addresses the final Arirang tour costume change, the Celine customized lambskin jacket that grew to become one of the mentioned stage seems to be of the 12 months. The jacket was embroidered with military-style detailing, worn throughout a set that was itself a meditation on Korean heritage and international id concurrently. That V can go from a second like that to a Champion marketing campaign and have each really feel utterly coherent is probably probably the most correct description of what makes him a compelling vogue determine. The intuition he describes is actual. It runs in each instructions directly.
The Arirang North American leg continues by way of early September. BTS performs Baltimore on August 10 and 11 at M&T Financial institution Stadium. The Champion True Champion FW26 marketing campaign is stay now at champion.com and goal.com.
Featured picture: Champion
