Boardroom speaks with the multi-hyphenate about his newest role with everyone’s favorite hat shop.
Chase B always has a fitted on. Ask him why, and he’ll tell you about his freshman year at Howard University, when he realized you could wear hats to class. He went and bought every fitted he could find — combing websites, hitting vintage spots across D.C. — and never really stopped. “I’ve worn a hat every day since probably my freshman year of college.”
That obsession eventually led him to Lids. In the winter of 2023, backstage at a Philadelphia tour stop, he met Lawrence Berger. The conversation was quick, but Berger left the meeting with a clear idea: they should do something together. Chase B flew out to Indiana, spent an hour in a room sketching ideas, and what came out of that session was the Maximal hat — a riot of fabrics, patterns, and color inspired by one of his favorite shoes, the Nike What The Dunk. The hat sold out in under ten minutes. Everyone copped one. LeBron was spotted wearing it.
After that, he dropped a tweed hat and then one timed to the release of his own Jackman Jumpman sneaker. With each drop, it became clearer that Chase B and Lids weren’t just collaborators, they were building towards something. That something was made official earlier this year when Lids named him Creative Director.
In his new role, Chase B isn’t looking to design 300 hats a year. He’s thinking bigger: about culture, about the friends and artists in his orbit who’ve never been given the right entry point, and about what it looks like to push a legacy headwear brand somewhere it’s never been. The hats are just the beginning.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.
Boardroom: This isn’t your first time working with Lids. Walk me through what drew you to the brand and how that first collaboration came together.
Chase B: I met Lawrence [Berger] backstage at the Philadelphia show and he was like, “Yo, I heard you’re the guy to talk to about hats.” I was like, “Yeah, I’ve worn a hat every day since probably my freshman year of college.” And so he’s like, “We should do something.” So I ended up coming out to Indiana to brainstorm few different ideas. We were going through different colorways, but I actually had the idea for Maximal years before — just because What The Dunk was my favorite shoe ever. Conceptually, just to get that maximal approach of tie dyes and camouflages and fabrics and patterns and everything. So I asked, is there a possibility that we get this done with a hat? And everyone looked around the room like, I don’t see why not. We conceptualized everything — saw what was actually feasible, what wasn’t, as far as materials, what would look right with the hat, what would even structure the hat the right way. We ended up sampling it out and it felt perfect. Even the structure felt sturdier than your average hat.
The first Maximal sold out in 15, 20 minutes. We saw LeBron wearing it. When you see your creation out in the world, what do you feel? Are you self-critical, or is it pure gratitude?
Honestly, especially with a project as risky as that — you don’t really see too many hats with that many different details and patterns and colors. It actually turned a lot of people off. With everything I create, I’d like it to be a little bit polarizing. Just why not? As much as somebody hates it, somebody’s going to love it.
But with seeing the success that it did, it’s kind of almost like a sigh of relief. It’s like, I knew I wasn’t tripping. If I liked it so much, I know that somebody else would, and to see who did respond to it was super gratifying. So yeah, to me it was just a sigh of relief — I knew I was on to something, and I was just excited to get to work on the next one.
Looking back on it, do you see that design influence elsewhere?
I definitely see a lot more pinwheel hats now. And honestly, I feel like that’s the goal. It’s there to inspire. It’s not like nobody else had done it — it wasn’t the first. Back in the day with Fabolous wearing all those hats to match his Syracuse jerseys—that concept has been there. But I think I revamped the different fabrics and different materials and different patterns. I’d like to claim that revamping of it.
Walk me through the end of that collab and how you went from collaborator to Creative Director.
From that, we already had two or three more releases scheduled for that year. The biggest thing was that we had these different ideas and they might not necessarily be a Maximal concept. So we released the tweed hat later that year, which has nothing to do with a Maximal concept, but it’s just something that I thought was super necessary to present to the space of headwear. And then we had the shadow suede hat that actually matched the Jumpman Jacks, the Rexxs that I came out with last December. So it’s like all these different concepts that might not necessarily be a Chase B entity, but it’s like we still want these hats to be released to the greater public.
So it was just like, if we have that kind of creative direction intention, it’s like — all right, not everything needs to be just a Chase B collaboration. It’s more so about just the advancement of design. And not even with headwear — it might be apparel, it might be sports, it might be movies, music related. It’s just kind of getting all these things out creatively through the company. It’s just been a beautiful partnership.
I talked to the whole team here, I talked to Lawrence, and it just made sense to have a bigger title than just a collaborator with the brand.
In this new role, you’re going to be steering them toward trends that are bubbling and people they should be working with. As you look around now, are there ideas or people you’re seeing that you want to incorporate or bring over?
I got a lot of friends that don’t even know where to start or just haven’t been approached with those opportunities. I feel like a lot of all my friends wore fitteds at some point or another. So at this point it’s really about just getting everybody involved. I feel like that’s what I’m here for: to bring that culture. I’m extremely outside, whether it’s FanaticsFest or the Grammys. I feel like that’s kind of my role, to go and expand the brand and go get these people that I’m involved with almost on a weekly basis, to be a part of the brand and give their input as well.
It’s not always about me designing everything. I’m not here to design 300 hats a year or anything like that. It’s more of like a cultural push between myself and Lids, to make this brand go even further culturally. And it’s just been a very fun experiment.
What’s the hardest part of designing a good hat?
Designing a good hat, I feel like, is to do something that hasn’t been done before. There’s a hat being created every single day with certain logos, certain teams — so to really stand out is the challenge.
But it’s crazy because the thing I took most for granted — especially when designing the first Maximal hat, and we kept it going with the tweed also — was the satin interior. I have a regular head of hair, but I didn’t even think about girls and people with dreadlocks and everything. [A friend] was like, “You showed so much appreciation for our actual haircuts with that.” And I didn’t think that was such a big thing. And actually, it really made the hat even sturdier than your average 59Fifty or something like that. So I think the satin was the biggest addition that I’m going to keep going through all the hats.
Then there’s the crown-to-brim ratio. It’s life or death. We actually sampled out a fitted version of the tweed hat. When I received it, I put it on and felt like the crown was a little too big in the front — it felt a little bulkier. I went with the strap hat version because it had a smaller profile in the front, and I wanted people to be able to wear it to maybe even like a job interview. Or something more casual like a brunch.
Even right now, we’re working on this NHL project where we sampled out four different versions of snapbacks with the exact same logo, just on different profiled hats, to figure out what materials fit best. You might be in a hot city — you want to take that into account. So it is a whole bunch of factors that you put into a final product.
For the “Colours” Collection you drew inspiration from the Easter Air Force One. Walk me through how you landed on that shoe and how you extrapolated the design onto a hat.
I’ve just always had a huge affinity for color in general. That’s why we ended up calling it the Colors Collection, just because I’ve always been obsessed with color. That’s why with the Maximal — with everything — it’s kind of how you get these different colors, all different Pantones, to just kind of mesh in this matrimony.
So with the Colors Collection, I was thinking about pastels in general — how do we get to this point where all these colors kind of combine? And we came across this 2006 pair of the Air Force One, and it kind of coincides with the Maximal concept of just creating these moments, even if you don’t necessarily even like the hat. It’s about that moment of sneaker culture mixed with culture, just bringing that back together. Looking at the whole history of fitteds, there just hasn’t been one like that. So I wanted this to be a huge moment just for springtime — with the pinks and everything, getting girls involved. The whole concept was about the spring energy and expanding on the Maximal concept but just giving it a different twist.
And I feel like the Easter Air Force Ones is something that they don’t do every so often. We got lucky — I didn’t even know that the 2026 pair was coming out. So it’s just like another thing: having your finger on the pulse and being like, let’s take a chance with this. And it worked out.
Who has the best hat game right now?
Honestly, it might not even necessarily be celebrities. I’m always going to credit Wale for his fitted collection. He’s been wearing a lot of Capitals stuff lately. I’m going to say Bun B is up there. I feel like he’s been consistent throughout his whole 30, 40-year career — he always has a fitted on. And third, I gotta shout out my man Maxo Kream. He’s always been a huge fitted guy. I would never play with him when it comes to fitteds. He’s pretty much an everyday guy for sure.
Fitted or snapback?
Always fitted. Yeah. The whole history of my love for hats came when I was a freshman at Howard. When I found out you could even wear hats to class — because that’s obviously not a thing in high school — I figured that out and just went and bought every fitted I could find. I just started looking up all these different websites and different vintage spots in DC and everything like that. So that’s when my first love for fitteds began. I do love a good snapback, but it depends on the exact crown and profile and everything. But I’m always going to be a fitted guy.
Read More:
‘Euphoria’ Returns Unhinged, Unapologetic, and Unrepentant
Pete Crow-Armstrong on Winning Over Chicago Cubs Fans: ‘They Know Ball’
Cubs All-Star Pete Crow-Armstrong Is Owning the Moment in Chicago
How T.I. Engineered His Best Rollout in Years
Livvy Dunne Explains How NIL Changed Her Life
