Recently unveiled to kick off the club’s season in the NPSL, the Admiral New Orleans Jesters kits evoke the beauty, history, and vibrance of the club’s home city — far from an easy feat.
New Orleans is a city teeming with culture. Of course, there’s the bacchanalian Mardi Gras celebration, the diverse architecture of the French Quarter, and the unmistakable sound of big brass jazz, but even beyond these iconic pillars of the Big Easy, it is rich in history, community, and storytelling.
Part of this everyday pulse of the city are the New Orleans Jesters. The NPSL side is the highest level of soccer in New Orleans, and has ingrained itself into its surrounding community by partnering with significant organizations throughout the city, providing opportunities for players of all backgrounds, and making real, tangible impacts on not just players, but entire neighborhoods.
The Jesters are everything you’d want out of a grassroots organization. The club is accessible, diverse, and properly representative of the vibrant city it resides in.
Of course, a team like this would need to look the part as well.
The Jesters introduced a new set of kits for the 2024 season that strengthen their ties to their home even further, utilizing a unique color scheme and various design cues inspired by overt and subtle facets of life in New Orleans. The Jesters worked with kit supplier Admiral to create a set of uniforms that don’t just look aesthetically pleasing, but are also true to New Orleans — a frenetic city that has no mold or template.
The Home Kit
The first thing that stands out with the Jesters’ kits are the colors.
The home shirt is draped in a Mardi Gras color scheme, with a bold purple base that is contrasted by bright green and gold accents. A graphic on the back of the neck illustrates the symbolism of the three traditional colors, which represent faith, justice, and power.
Beyond the color scheme, the home kit features a diamond pattern inspired by harlequins, who have become historically intertwined with royal court jesters over the years.
The Jesters and Admiral wanted to create a jersey that celebrates the 150-year history of Mardi Gras, and they have done so in a way that makes the wearer not just a fan, but a custodian of the celebration’s renowned legacy.
The Away Kit
From St. Charles Avenue to the French Quarter, New Orleans is home to an array of beautiful architecture with a diverse set of influences ranging from French, Spanish, Creole, and beyond.
A mainstay, and perhaps the most iconic architectural element is the wrought iron balcony, which is present on nearly every building that lines the streets of the area. These ornate features combine form and function, as they aren’t just beautiful, but they fulfill the paramount need for an outdoor space during humid Gulf summers.
Wrought iron designs can feature depictions of floral and leaf motifs, and oftentimes the fleur-de-lis, which has become a symbol of New Orleans and is also present in the Jesters’ logo.
The Jesters utilize a wrought iron-inspired design for their away kit, which features a green base with gold pinstripes and purple sleeve cuffs. It’s a simpler design than the avant-garde look of the home kit, but the tidy stripes made by the balcony pattern is smart and works quite well.
The Third Kit
The limited edition third kit from Admiral and the Jesters takes the simplicity of the away kit and throws it out the window.
Inspired by New Orleans’ ties to jazz, looking at the shirt is reminiscent of listening to a polyphonic trumpet solo over a wandering bass line and shifty six-eight time drums.
New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, perhaps the most influential genre of music of all time. Without it, popular music as it stands today would not exist. The basis of rock ‘n’ roll, hip-hop, reggae, house, and countless other genres all stem from jazz music.
A handful of the most prominent jazz musicians of all time hail from New Orleans, including Louis Armstrong, Buddy Bolden, Louis Prima, and Jon Batiste, among others. The New Orleans Jazz Festival remains one of the biggest music festivals every year, and in 2024 featured headliners that included Batiste, The Rolling Stones, and The Foo Fighters.
The intricate patterns throughout the third kit, which depict various music instruments and symbols, are befitting of jazz — they’re free-flowing, follow little to no preconceived rules of design, and can be chaotic at times. Yet, like the genre of music, the design pulls everything together and somehow works.
The Goalkeeper Kit
Rounding out the set is the goalkeeper kit, which continues the Mardi Gras color scheme theme. Over the main gold base are purple and green waves, which represent the power of the Mississippi river that meanders throughout New Orleans.
But the design goes even further to connect to the city. A second wave pattern is embedded within the first — a sound wave that harkens back to the intimate relationship New Orleans has with music. The design works on several levels, and executes its motifs without being too on-the-nose.
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All in all, Admiral and the Jesters have created a set of jerseys that uniquely tie into New Orleans and the connection the team has to the city. Most clubs and brands will try to sell you on how their kits tell a story. These four actually do it.
The entire New Orleans Jesters collection is available via Admiral’s online shop.
