Forden Golf makes clothes for municipal golf, and it is specific about it. The graphics are in-jokes about the local muni, the scorecard and the putt you left short. The cuts are boxy cotton and heavyweight fleece rather than anything technical. The whole range runs from fourteen dollars to seventy-seven. None of it is trying to get you through the gate at a club that would ask what you shot.
The reference points are skate graphics and mid-century sports print, and the logo tells you which one the brand takes seriously. Forden calls the mark the Swingman, and it comes from Harold Edgerton's strobe photography at MIT in 1938: a golfer dissolved into fifty superimposed selves, the shaft still bending after the ball has gone. Flattened to one colour on a hat panel, the figure keeps what made the original work. It is a picture of motion rather than a picture of a golfer.
Chad Gurman founded the brand and has kept the brief narrow. “Forden Golf was founded on the belief that golf fashion should be as dynamic and expressive as the game itself. Our mission is to provide a wardrobe that effortlessly blends the elegance of the sport with the boldness of street style,” Gurman says on the brand's own site. In practice that means cotton fleece, boxy tees, type-led graphics about municipal golf, and a hat line made with New Era.
Who it is for: the golfer who walks nine after work, keeps a cheap towel clipped to the bag, and would rather look like they came from somewhere than from a pro shop. The tee packet is the entry point at fourteen dollars, the New Era caps are the piece that will outlast the trend, and the sweatshirts are what you will actually wear off the course.
The range is on its second collection. Collection II is the current one and most of it is thirty per cent off; Collection 1 has been moved to an archive and cut in half. The hats are the exception — every New Era piece holds at forty-eight dollars while the apparel discounts around it, which is usually a sign of where the demand actually is.
What Forden does not have is photography of anyone wearing any of it. There is no lookbook, no on-course imagery, no on-model shots at all; the Gallery page on their site is an empty template. For a brand whose stated business is expression, that is the obvious gap, and it is the one thing holding the range back from reading as clearly as it deserves to. The clothes are better than the pictures of them.
SWING KINGS · $14 — Start here, because it is the most Forden object Forden makes. The tee picks come in a foil sachet in Newport green, gold and white stripe across the top, the wordmark set in the same heavy slab a cigarette pack uses, and SWING KINGS printed across the bottom where the format would normally go. The tees inside are wooden and stamped 33. It is a joke that took real work to land, and it is the only thing in the range photographed with any styling at all.
THE LOGO, ON EVERYTHING ELSE — The Swingman mark is a figure mid-swing rendered as overlapping strokes, and it is a direct reference to a photograph. Doc Edgerton fired a strobe a hundred times a second at a golfer at MIT in 1938 and produced a body dissolving into fifty superimposed selves. Forden has flattened that into a logo, and it works hardest on the accessories, where the repeat has room to run.
COLLECTION II · $42–$45.50 — This is where the brand does its talking. The graphics are in-jokes about being a normal golfer: municipal courses, missed putts, the scorecard as a document of failure. They are set in type rather than illustration, which keeps them the right side of novelty. Everything here is cotton, cut boxy, and currently thirty per cent off.
$63–$77 · DOWN FROM $90–$110 — The heavier pieces are where the price drops start to look serious, and where the brand's collegiate instinct comes out. Nothing here is technical. These are cotton fleece sweatshirts with golf graphics on them, which is either the whole point or a limitation depending on how you feel about playing in a hoodie.
ALL $48 · NOT ON SALE — Forden makes hats with New Era, which for a brand this size is the real credential in the range. The 9Forty A-Frame comes in eight two-tone colourways and the Golfer snapback in six, all at forty-eight dollars, and none of them are discounted while nearly everything else is — which tells you which part of the business is working.
THE SHORT LIST, LITERALLY — Bottoms are the thinnest part of the range and Forden knows it — three shorts and three sweat pants, most of them plain. The mesh short is the one with any design in it.
NO LOOKBOOK, SO: DETAILS — Forden has no on-model or on-course photography — no lookbook, and a Gallery page with nothing on it. So this is the range close up instead: the repeats, the embroidery, the inside of the tin. It is the most you can see of these clothes until somebody photographs them being worn.
Chad Gurman. The brand publishes his founding statement on its About page: Forden Golf was founded on the belief that golf fashion should be as dynamic and expressive as the game itself.
A figure mid-swing drawn as overlapping strokes. Forden states it references Harold Doc Edgerton's stroboscopic golf photography Edgerton was the MIT engineer who invented the stroboscope and in 1938 photographed pro Densmore Shute at 100 flashes per second, capturing the shaft bending after impact.
Yes. The headwear line is made with New Era across the 9Forty A-Frame and Golfer snapback shapes, plus a 59Fifty fitted. All the snapbacks are $48 and, unlike the apparel, are not discounted.
A collaboration with N 33 six stamped wooden tees in a foil sachet designed to read as a cigarette pack, in Newport green with a gold stripe. $14, down from $20.
Most of it, at the time of writing. Collection II is around thirty per cent off and the Collection 1 archive is half price. Headwear is excluded.
