Designer shoots for different Haiti stories in Gap’s World Cup collection 

Nearly six decades after Haiti’s national football team stepped onto a World Cup pitch in West Germany in 1974, Gap stores around the world are honoring the year with “74” stitched across jackets, jerseys and knitwear — thanks to Haitian Ouigi Theodore. 

Gap launched the two football-inspired collections designed and creatively directed by Theodore just ahead of the world’s biggest football tournament. At the heart of the collaboration is the OuiGap collection, an elevated assortment of football-inspired apparel and accessories meant to honor those who came before Theodore.

For the Haitian-born founder of The Brooklyn Circus brand, the number is more than a design detail. It is a reminder of one of Haiti’s proudest sporting achievements. An opportunity to place one of Haiti’s proudest sporting moments before a global audience through one of America’s most recognizable retail brands. 

Born in Delmas 19 in 1974, the same year Haiti’s national football team qualified for the FIFA World Cup, Theodore sees the collection as both a tribute and a continuation of a story that remains unfinished. He is joining a chorus of fashion storytellers placing Haiti at the center of a global conversation about sport, style and belonging. Instead of political turmoil and insecurity, the array of collections instead offers a narrative about legacy, creativity and cultural pride that resonates across the Haitian diaspora.

During the interview, wearing a cream football-knit polo beneath a black track jacket trimmed with white piping, Theodore embodied the collection’s fusion of athletic heritage and contemporary streetwear. Finished with a patterned neck scarf, dark sunglasses and a military-inspired cap, the look felt less like a promotional outfit than a visual expression of the story he has spent his career telling, one rooted in Haiti, shaped by Brooklyn and carried into the world through culture.

Asked whether the project is an act of remembrance or an attempt to imagine Haiti’s next historic football moment, Theodore told The Haitian Times it’s a mix of both.

“The past is, of course, the 1974 team,” he said. “The present is 2026. And the future is what the possibilities are.”

Those possibilities are woven throughout the collection.

Why 1974 matters

The recurring number “74” appears across jerseys, jackets, knits and coordinated separates. It serves as a tribute to the Haitian squad, embodied by Emmanuel Sanon, the striker whose goal against Italian goalkeeper Dino Zoff remains one of the most celebrated moments in the nation’s football history.

The squad’s World Cup appearance remains one of Haiti’s most enduring achievements in international sports. The team’s legacy has endured through generations not simply because they qualified, but because they created a moment that allowed Haitians around the world to see themselves represented on one of the world’s largest stages.

That connection, he says, has always felt deeply personal.

“I want them to know that we genuinely appreciate what they did,” Theodore said of the 1974 players. “They sacrificed. They played with such rigor and such pride that 50-something years later, we’re still talking about that.”

Threading identity through clothing 

Growing up between Haitian heritage and New York City culture, football became one of the threads connecting Theodore’s two worlds. The collection reflects that dual identity, one he says took years to fully embrace.

Growing up in New York while remaining deeply connected to Haiti forced him to confront questions many children of immigrants know well: How much of one culture do you hold on to? How much of another do you embrace?

His answer today is simple. 

“I’m Haitian enough, and I am American enough.”

That balancing act between Haiti and America, memory and ambition, heritage and reinvention has become one of Theodore’s defining themes as a designer.

Since founding The Brooklyn Circus in 2006, Theodore has built a reputation for using fashion as a vehicle for preserving culture and challenging assumptions about Black identity, immigration and belonging. The brand’s mission is guided by what he calls a “100-year plan” — a long-term vision focused less on trends and more on legacy.

“Anybody can make clothes,” Theodore said. “But not anybody can make art history.”

Expanding the Haitian story 

For Theodore, the Gap collaboration represents another chapter in that broader mission.

The collection itself reflects that layered approach to storytelling. Rather than creating literal reproductions of football uniforms, Theodore sought to design garments that could move between sport, travel and everyday life pieces.

Among the standout pieces are football-inspired jerseys, rugby-knit polos, vintage-influenced sweater polos, tailored athletic shorts and a lightweight packable jacket with “74” detailing. Theodore incorporates references drawn from historic football graphics, fan culture and the textures of the sport itself, including details inspired by football nets and stadium layering traditions.

With Haiti’s image so often reduced to political instability and crisis, Theodore believes much of Haiti remains invisible to international audiences. He says creatives have a responsibility to expand the narrative.

“Haitian art and Haitian craft and Haitian stories and Haitian history is more than just politics,” he said. “It’s sports, it’s spirituality, it’s music, it’s cloth. It’s all of these things.”

Alongside the OuiGap collection, Gap is releasing a broader football capsule featuring jerseys, hoodies, tees and hats inspired by football cultures from countries including Brazil, Argentina, France, England, Japan, Mexico and the United States.

The philosophy Theodore calls the “global village” is central to both the collection and his broader work. He views each country not simply as a football powerhouse but as part of a cultural conversation shaped by migration, exchange and community.

Such movement is a strength rather than a contradiction.

“I represent the diaspora that landed here in New York City,” he said. “Flatbush, to be exact.”

For Theodore, placing Haiti’s story inside a company like Gap carries its own significance.

Founded in 1969, Gap remains one of the most recognizable American apparel brands, with a retail footprint that spans dozens of countries and millions of customers worldwide. Haitian cultural references rarely receive such high visibility.

It’s one that comes with responsibility, too, because safeguards are necessary when a multinational corporation engages with Haitian culture.

“You keep Ouigi on board,” he said with a laugh, referring to safeguarding practices.

Theodore knows the collection will not solve Haiti’s challenges. Nor does he expect clothing alone to redefine how the world sees the country.

What he hopes the collection can do is contribute to a broader narrative — one that makes room for Haiti’s artists, athletes, dreamers and storytellers alongside the headlines that too often dominate international coverage.

Too often, he said, people tell one story and stop there.

The more important question is what comes next.

“And then what?”

More than half a century after Haiti introduced itself to the football world, Theodore is betting that the story still has another chapter to tell.

Not through a goal this time.

Through culture.

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