Lifestyle
With Underdog Brand, Jason Kelce Takes ‘Made in the U.S.’ Seriously
Jason Kelce, a mellow mountain of a man, has spent most of his life fretting over offensive snaps.
Now, a year into his retirement after 13 seasons as a center for the Philadelphia Eagles, Mr. Kelce has space to puzzle over other matters. Lately, he’s been thinking about sweatshirts and T-shirts. And he has thoughts. Lots of thoughts.
“On the inside of a sweatshirt, I don’t like when it feels fuzzy,” said Mr. Kelce, speaking on a video call from his Philadelphia home in April, just a few days after the birth of his fourth daughter. He wants a “heavier-duty” sweatshirt, with a smidge of stretch. Something durable, “that you can wear working or lounging around on the couch.”
Oh, and it needs to be made entirely in the United States.
To achieve all this, Mr. Kelce, 37, has taken matters into his own hands. Today, his Underdog apparel brand is debuting a tidy collection of crew neck sweatshirts and T-shirts, all produced — from the cotton to the completed garment — in the United States. These items are produced in collaboration with American Giant, a San Francisco-based company formed in 2012 that manufactures entirely in the United States.
The American Giant-produced Underdog pocket T-shirts and French terry sweatshirts will sell for $45 and $79, respectively, and will be sold on the Underdog website. They are, to Mr. Kelce’s specifications, on the burlier side. During the interview, he wore the pocket T-shirt in green, his abundant biceps mildly squeezed by the sleeves.
“I don’t want to offend anybody, I never understood the reason that somebody would want to wear Gucci, or some of these high-end brands,” said Mr. Kelce, leaving unsaid that his brother, Travis, has been known to wear a Gucci hat or two. “It’s never appealed to me.”
“I would much rather wear something that symbolized a blue-collar worker as opposed to a suit,” he added, even if he does have to wriggle into a suit when he appears as an analyst for “Monday Night Countdown” on ESPN.
That Underdog’s clothes are entirely made in the United States is the most gratifying part to Mr. Kelce.
“I grew up going into steel mills with my father,” he said of his childhood in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. “So, the concept of American workers making things was something that was ingrained early. And I just always gravitated toward it.”
Mr. Kelce has long been plotting for life after his last snap. In 2022, he started the “New Heights” podcast with his brother. It remains in the top 200 of Apple’s top podcasts, though it now runs behind his wife Kylie’s show, “Not Gonna Lie.”
While many retired athletes pour money into car dealerships or restaurant ventures, Mr. Kelce became curious about clothes.
“I was trying to come up with what’s a way that we can celebrate Philadelphia,” said Mr. Kelce, who is nothing if not an unofficial ambassador for his adopted city. “And I love wearing shirts that represent me and everything that I believe in.”
He started Underdog in 2022 as an apparel brand with vigorous nods to Philadelphia. Past graphics featured his Eagles teammates, and the name alludes to the Eagles having labeled themselves as underdogs on their way to winning the Super Bowl in 2018. It is a unique proposition from a former athlete, and one that has, to many outside the Eagles fandom, perhaps flown under the radar. Underdog does not have the techy edge of say, Tom Brady’s slick, fitness-centric Brady brand. It leans more on Mr. Kelce’s jolly, jumbo-size profile than on his on-field prowess.
The label has made prior attempts at producing in the United States, though Mr. Kelce soon learned that even if the tag said an item had been made here, “a good portion of that might be made overseas.” Garments that read “Made in the United States” can be produced from cotton or other components that derive from elsewhere.
In American Giant, Underdog found a partner that was capable of producing the whole garment, including the fabric, here in the United States. The cotton was harvested and finished in the Southeast, including in North Carolina. The garments themselves were produced in Los Angeles.
“These fabrics were custom-designed for Jason,” said Bayard Winthrop, the chief executive of American Giant who underscored that the ex-Pro-Bowler “had lots of small opinions” about how the shirts and sweats should fit and feel.
“The shirts have a really gutsy, sturdy quality to them,” said Mr. Winthrop. “They drape a certain way. They’re not clingy to the body. They’re not overly delicate.”
Last year, Mr. Kelce traveled with Mr. Winthrop to North and South Carolina see the production process firsthand, giving him a look at how clothes are made that few people ever see, or even consider. With most apparel manufacturing having been exported overseas, only 2 percent of the clothing Americans buy is manufactured domestically.
“The eye-opening part for me was how truly decentralized this is, how many people touch just one T-shirt and how many steps there are in that process,” said Mr. Kelce. “I had never really thought much about that.”
Though this project has been in the works for around two years, it debuts at an auspicious moment, as Americans are contemplating what they’re willing to sacrifice — macro- and micro-economically — to bring back American manufacturing. Hours before the interview, President Trump pulled back on steep tariffs that had unsettled the global economic landscape, though a tit-for-tat trade war with China has continued.
“I have no issues with global trade whatsoever,” said Mr. Kelce, who was evenhanded about the impact of his small stab at making his goods solely in the United States. He was, he said, not going to stop buying shirts and clothes that were not totally made here.
“I don’t think there’s any type of statement trying to be made other than, ‘Listen, there’s some really awesome reasons to support homegrown American businesses and local businesses,’” he said.
Considering Mr. Kelce’s longstanding love affair with Philadelphia, it may strike some shoppers as odd that the Underdog line is not produced there. It was discussed, but the reality, said Mr. Winthrop, was that Philadelphia, like many cities that were once manufacturing hubs, was “gutted out” when it came to apparel production.
“There is no at-scale dyeing or finishing or knitting capability in Philly,” he said. Mr. Kelce said that in the future, the company would find ways to incorporate the city into its brand. His partner, Stephen Porter, noted that anything Underdog screen printed or embroidered was done locally.
The line might not be made in Philadelphia, but his green shirt proved that Mr. Kelce knew he had to keep his fans happy.
“Philadelphia bleeds green,” he said. “If we didn’t have a green shirt, it would have felt like malpractice.”
Entrepreneur David Huang tests out a VR headset while conducting demonstrations of the social dance lesson app Dance Guru at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., June 17, 2026.
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Wedding season is in full swing, bringing with it a familiar sense of dread for anyone who fears the dance floor.
But relief may finally be at hand with the help of a new app, Dance Guru, and a virtual reality (VR) headset.
The social dance instruction app transports users to a spacious, digital dance studio. Waiting inside is a computer-generated coach: a handsome, male avatar wearing a shirt open to his navel. He speaks with a slightly gravelly English accent.
“Watch me now,” he instructs at the start of a waltz lesson — which NPR tried out at the Augmented World Expo in Long Beach, Calif., an annual conference showcasing the latest developments in virtual and augmented reality.
The avatar then demonstrates a basic box step.
From there, the lesson becomes interactive. The coach tells the user to hold his hand while an electric pinging sound tracks the student’s foot placement.
“One, two, three, four, five, six,” the virtual teacher counts down.
When the user stumbles, he remains remarkably patient. “Do not worry, foundations take time. Let’s try that again. Work on grounding your steps more intentionally.”
Solving the beginner’s dilemma
Dance Guru creator David Huang said he came up with the idea for the app a couple of years ago out of frustration.
“I always wanted to learn to dance and I was always terrible at it,” Huang said. “And I always ended up stopping midway through the lessons.”
He soon realized that many beginners hit the exact same roadblocks.
“Private lessons are too expensive, and you feel like you’re always forgetting the dance steps,” Huang said. “You cannot find a partner to dance with. So I figured maybe I can create something like this.”
The Dance Guru platform currently offers tutorials in salsa, bachata, waltz, and cha-cha, in both lead and follow modes. To make the digital instruction feel authentic, Huang used motion-capture technology to record the movements of real-life dance teachers — with their permission.
Building on the legacy of online tutorials and video games
Dance Guru belongs to a small but growing wave of apps using VR to demystify social dance. At a nearby booth, conference attendee Victor Chen is testing out a competing app called Trip the Light. It currently offers salsa lessons, as well as freestyle options, where a user can dance with a partner without having to learn specific steps.
Trip the Light’s booth at the Augmented World Expo included posters of the app’s virtual instructors. Real-life performers, who gave Trip the Light permission to motion capture their movements, were used as a basis for these avatars.
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“A lot of times when you’re trying to learn a choreography, it’s watching a YouTube video and you have to pause it, rewind, and play it,” Chen said. “If you were to have a virtual avatar dancing in front of you and correcting for any parts that you missed, it might be a lot easier.”
Interactive video games like Dance Dance Revolution and Just Dance, and YouTube tutorials have been helping people improve their skills in private for years. But those games are mostly aimed at solo players. Unlike the new generation of immersive VR apps, they cannot simulate the mechanics or confidence required for partner dancing on a live dance floor.
The reality check
But this kind of app won’t work for every dancer.
“Everyone learns a little bit differently. And so unless you have a game that has lots of different ways of teaching, you’re going to have things that work for some people and don’t work for others,” said Ariana Katana, a trained contemporary dancer and dance content creator who’s active on YouTube, Twitch and other platforms. “Also, it’s hard to dance with a headset on.”
And then there’s the issue of not being able to physically feel a virtual partner’s hand or shoulder while dancing with them. Patrick Ascolese, the creator of Trip the Light, said the experience could become more tactile in the future. “Haptic suits and wearables will be coming, but I think we’re a little away from that,” he said.
Ascolese said even with their limitations, immersive tools like Trip the Light have immense potential as judgment-free training grounds — giving reluctant dancers the baseline confidence they need to eventually step onto the dance floor with real partners in the real world, including at weddings.
“Just like anything else, practice makes perfect,” said Ascolese. “So the more time you spend in VR with a virtual partner, it works towards helping you get over that social hurdle. We are teaching you the moves that you have to do in order to go out and have fun.”
Jennifer Vanasco edited the broadcast and digital versions of this story. Chloee Weiner mixed the audio.
For half a century, Deidre Hall has taken on every kind of disaster in the drama-packed town of Salem, Ill., as a star of “Days of Our Lives.”
There was the time — actually, it happened twice — when her character, Dr. Marlena Evans, was famously possessed by the devil and even levitated.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Or the time a serial killer, who was actually Marlena under hypnosis, seemed to kill several beloved characters. The long-running show’s storylines have become legendary, and in March, while promoting “Hail Mary,” actor Ryan Gosling even gave Hall a shout-out, admitting he was a fan, praising the hard work of soap opera actors and calling her an “OG acting inspiration.”
But Hall’s real life in Santa Monica is much quieter than her character’s, and she likes it that way.
“When I bought my house in Santa Monica, I didn’t realize how great it would be to live near Montana Avenue,” says Hall, 78, about the popular shopping spot. Every day, she walks to the main street with her golden retriever, Riley, and enjoys Pilates, art and good food along the way. “The owners of the Farms Market even keep dog biscuits, so guess where the dog wants to go every time we walk — the Farms, of course,” she says, laughing.
When she isn’t filming the daily soap opera, which airs on Peacock, Hall enjoys raising monarch butterflies, exploring the shops and restaurants on Montana, and hosting movie nights at home with her two sons.
Here’s what a perfect day in L.A. looks like for her.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for length and clarity.
7 a.m.: Breakfast and dog walk
I usually kick off my day with a protein shake, feed our golden retriever and take her out for a walk. She’s a phenomenal girl. When we adopted her, her name was Riley, but I did think about naming her after Mrs. Hughes from “Downton Abbey.”
10 a.m.: Church and garden time
After I walk the dog and go to church, I like to spend some time in my yard. I’m not a natural gardener, but I really enjoy it. I started raising monarch butterflies because my identical twin sister, who played my twin on the show, planted a butterfly garden. Monarchs are amazing because they are transitional. Every year, they travel from Mexico to southern New England, but it’s getting harder for them. Their numbers have dropped by about 80%. To help, I plant milkweed, which is what they need to survive. I buy my milkweed from the Staghorn Garden on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica. Julie, who owns the nursery, is delightful and has a wide variety of milkweed. The monarchs always seem to find my garden. Julie was raising some caterpillars too, and she cared a lot about them. We talked about how important it is to help the butterflies. That’s why I do this. Sometimes I get milkweed with eggs already on it, and Julie knows her butterflies are going to a good home.
1 p.m.: Walk to Montana Avenue for some lunch
I live near Montana and love taking long walks, going to Pilates and trying out the great restaurants nearby, like R+D Kitchen and La La Land. I’m a big fan of the waffles at the Courtyard Kitchen. Just a few days ago, I had a chicken salad on raisin bread with an Arnold Palmer, and it was delicious. It is right on Montana and has a nice outdoor seating area. It’s one of my favorite spots. La La Land always has a long line in the morning, which is perfect if you want coffee. They serve coffee, doughnuts, croissants and avocado toast. There’s plenty of outdoor seating, and you can even bring your dog.
2 p.m.: Peek inside a clock shop
There’s a small clock shop on Montana Avenue that’s closed on Sundays, but if you walk by, you’ll see all kinds of clocks — standing, table and wall clocks. The owner is great at fixing them. Once, I bought a wall clock from MacKenzie-Childs, but it didn’t work. And I was really upset because it matched everything else on my countertop. I brought it to the owner and said, “I love this, but I can’t make it work.” He fixed it right away. His name is John, but I call him Geppetto. And we all know why. He really does have a magic touch.
2:30 p.m.: Visit a neighborhood art gallery
Ten Women Gallery is run by 10 artists, all of whom show their work there. I was drawn to some watercolors there, bought a few cards and spoke with one of the artists. She told me, “You seem to love watercolors,” and mentioned that the artist who painted them, Pamela Harnois, lives in Los Angeles and teaches nearby. I got Pamela’s name and found out she taught at the Brentwood Art School. I was so inspired by her gift that I started taking private lessons with her on Saturdays. That gallery is where I discovered my love for watercolor painting.
3 p.m.: Grab some ice cream at Rori’s
The other day, my longtime girlfriend wanted to get ice cream and told me, “We are walking to Rori’s Artisanal Creamery.” It’s a small shop on Montana near Lincoln. They make everything themselves, using local ingredients from grass-fed cows with no added hormones. The place is family-owned and probably has the healthiest ice cream you’ll find. They switch up their flavors often, but my favorite is the salted caramel.
6 p.m.: Family dinner and movie night at home
R+D Kitchen is always packed, so my sons, who are 31 and 33, do the cooking. They come over, and together we make salads and cook dinner. There’s a neighborhood grocery store called the Farms, off Montana, a small family-run place that has everything we need. Everyone knows each other there, and people bring their dogs. We try to have movie night every Sunday. Sometimes the day changes, but we always make sure to have one night a week where we cook a meal and sit down as a family. Keeping that tradition has become really important to us. My sons are great cooks, which is funny because they definitely didn’t get that from me. [Laughs]
9 p.m.: Take Riley for one last walk and visit neighbors
After dinner, I take my dog for a walk. It’s a great way to meet neighbors. We always go around the same block. We’ve met so many people, and since she’s a golden retriever, she loves meeting everyone.
10 p.m.: News, knitting and bedtime
I am a news junkie, so I usually watch whatever is on the news before I go to bed. I have a long-standing passion for knitting. Lately, though, the news would make me drop a stitch.
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