Meet the Man Behind Notre Dame's Green Monster Inspired Uniforms

Glance back at Notre Dame football’s Shamrock Series uniforms worn in the 2014 matchup against Purdue in Indianapolis, and you won’t find green. You won’t find a leprechaun, and you won’t find a shamrock.

That’s because before Under Armour and Notre Dame even designed those 2014 threads, they’d already agreed on the recently released, all-green outfit the Irish will don in the 2015 Shamrock Series game against Boston College at Fenway Park in Boston in November.

“Collectively, we agreed that we were gonna do green in the Fenway Park game essentially at the onset of our agreement with Notre Dame,” said Adam Clement, Under Armour’s senior creative director for team sports.

Joe Raymond/Associated Press

Notre Dame announced its matchup with the Eagles at Fenway Park in late December 2013. One month later, Notre Dame and Under Armour formalized their new partnership.

“Last year when we did Shamrock we wanted to keep it really about Notre Dame and the core of Notre Dame, which is why it was focused on campus buildings, it was blue and gold only,” Clement said. “Also, a component of that which we couldn’t talk about last year was that we knew this year we wanted to do green for several reasons.”

Clement calls it a “double whammy.” Boston’s Irish heritage and the leprechaun’s green outfit made the color a natural choice. Of course, with Fenway’s 37-by-231-foot wall looming in left field beyond the yard markers, the selection was simple.

“What is the most iconic part of Fenway Park? Clearly, we all know it’s the Green Monster,” Clement said. “We wanted Notre Dame to come out green on green to personify the Green Monster.”

via Under Armour

With that primary component agreed upon, Clement and his team went to work on the full uniform. Clement leads a department that will grow to 17 members in the very near future, and he and one other designer worked specifically on the Shamrock Series uniforms. Beyond them, however, eight other people from various groups—product managers, sourcing specialists, tech designers and sports marketing folks—had their hands involved from Under Armour’s side.

“What’s amazing is the amount of people on this side that have to touch it in order to actually get this to the field,” Clement said.

Clement worked directly with Irish head football equipment manager Ryan Grooms, who served as the point person on Notre Dame’s chain of communication, which included the input of athletic director Jack Swarbrick and head coach Brian Kelly.

“The relationship with schools, it’s different for each school,” Clement said. “With Notre Dame, it’s fantastically collaborative. Ryan Grooms, he’s an integral part in this whole process. We have very open dialogue about what we want to do each year.”

Knowing the uniforms would be green provided a baseline and made the process easy, Clement said. With Grooms and the Irish aware of the color choice, Notre Dame gave Under Armour the flexibility to do its own research, find stories and begin to tell those stories.

via Under Armour

“[Notre Dame] makes sure it’s authentic, it’s real and it makes sense for them,” Clement said. “We’ll present a concept to them. Then they have a few tweaks here or there. Collectively, we come to this final resolution that we’re all really proud of.”

Clement jokingly knocked on wood and said, so far, Notre Dame’s tweaks have been minor, citing the consistent communication throughout the process and the biggest aspect, the color.

“Our relationship with Notre Dame has been such a lock-step relationship,” Clement said. “We’ve been really side by side this whole time.”

via Under Armour

The uniform’s stripes have 11 breaks to represent Notre Dame’s 11 consensus national championships. “Fighting Irish” text graces the right pant leg, a nod to the “The Original Fighting Irish” painting in Kelly’s office, a work that portrays the idea of standing shoulder to shoulder on a united front, Clement said. Such detail typifies one of the functioning principles in Under Armour’s design department: no art merely for art’s sake.

Clement, who earned his bachelor of fine arts from James Madison, recalled various college courses. For certain projects, Clement and his classmates would construct their designs and put them on the wall for the rest of the class to critique. On one occasion, Clement worked all night and waltzed into class quite pleased with his work. He put it up on the wall. The professor asked why he did what he did.

“I had no answer,” Clement recalled.

Because I think it looks cool. What answer are you looking for?

Take it off the wall. Find a concept. When you have a concept, come back and put it back up on the wall.

“From that day forward, that’s how I work,” Clement said. “That’s how my team works. Everything that we do will always have a reason. We won’t do design for the purpose of what’s trendy or what’s cool.”

Clement stressed the overall importance of thick skin in his line of work, joking there’s a good number of people “that want me dead because of some of the things I’ve done.” So he understands that while some Irish fans may hate the green-on-green look, Clement thinks they may be able to appreciate the concept behind it, the level of detail and the stories told through art.

“They can appreciate the concept behind it,” Clement said. “That will allow this uniform to stand the test of time. People won’t look back at this and think it’s the worst thing ever because there’s something about the University and about the team and the history that’s embedded into the design.”

Notre Dame and Under Armour fine tuned details such as the texture on the helmet and the shine of the leprechaun head decal on the helmet. The uniform was finalized during the 2014 season.

“The rest of the world saw this for the first time yesterday, but for all of us involved, both at Notre Dame and here at Under Armour, it’s almost old news because we’ve seen it for so long,” Clement said.

All quotes were obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.

Mike Monaco is the lead Notre Dame writer for Bleacher Report. Follow @MikeMonaco_ on Twitter.