Kehoe is a senior apparel designer for Nike’s football (soccer) division. Her creations are the basis of kits for professional teams playing around the world, including national teams and famous club teams like Inter Milan and Barcelona. Each kit has separate designs for when the team is home and and when it is away, all of which are replicated for sale to fans. 

Kehoe has a special connection to England’s team, the Lionesses, as she designed their home jerseys. She said the neckline design was inspired by old photos of players linking arms before games.

That spirit of solidarity has been on display this week as the team united in support of defender Jess Carter, who said she has been the victim of racial abuse online during the tournament. 

“It feels like a win when we can speak super authentically to a team's personality through their kit design,” Kehoe said. “I love that a team that is so passionate about standing beside one another in defense of what's right is wearing a kit designed with that same kind of mindset as its inspiration. It feels very full circle.”

Design as a team sport

The process of designing the athletic wear is a team sport in itself. Kehoe describes herself as the “coloring book artist who creates the black and white lines” for each piece in each kit. She works with technical designers, bringing their work on the form, fit and function for each garment to life. 

After the designs are approved, they are handed off to a team of graphic and color designers that works closely with each professional team to pick the colors and illustrations to fill in those “coloring book” lines.

“We create the outlines and the palette, and then the graphic designers work with the teams to figure out what from the palette they want to use,” she said. 

Kehoe said her team works two to three years in advance, with new lines released to coincide with major international tournaments, especially the World Cup. Many times, she doesn’t see the final product until after it has launched. 

“There are 10 steps in the process, and I’m step one, so by the time it gets to step 10 when the team is releasing it, I literally learn about it on Instagram,” she said. 

Indeed, she was surprised recently when friends told her that the home jersey she designed in 2023 for the Barcelona men’s football club, one of the top clubs in the world, set a new one-day sales record for the club when it was released in early July.

“I didn’t even know the jersey actually existed, and then suddenly I’m getting texts about Barcelona breaking single day jersey sales records,” she said.

Blue Hen training

Kehoe came to UD specifically for the fashion program in the Department of Fashion and Apparel Studies. She credits Martha Hall, director of innovation and assistant professor in the College of Health Sciences who has a joint appointment in the department, with teaching her to look for opportunities outside of what she typically thought of as the fashion design world.

“She really pushed me to see that I could be successful in the broader apparel industry, which has a lot of alternative avenues that aren't always what initially comes to mind when we use the term 'fashion,'” Kehoe said. 

Kehoe got her start in athleticwear during an internship her junior year with Under Armour in Baltimore. After a stint with a men’s apparel company in New York after graduation, she returned to UA where she spent a couple of years working as a technical designer, learning the ins and outs of how various fabrics fit the body, how they function, and making patterns.

She took that experience to Nike, where her first big project was creating the company’s flag football line at a time when flag football was still in its infancy. The company still uses those designs.

“I showed the designs to my boss, and he said, ‘OK, but there’s no money in flag football.’ We eventually ended up getting our own Nike commercial. People still talk about it to this day,” she said, smiling. 

The best part of her job? It’s not seeing superstars like Lebron James, who comes to Nike’s campus fairly often.

“This industry is tough and the highs are very high and the lows can be very low, but nothing beats getting to see something that you doodled on your computer ending up on an international stage,” she said.