Photo by Heather McCabe; click to enlarge

I recently picked up this tremendous basketball warm-up top for a mere nine bucks on eBay. As you can see above, it fits me near-perfectly. Let’s take a closer look at it, shall we?

The warm-up is made of black Durene — a cotton/rayon blend. The sleeve cuffs and waist trim are orange with white northwestern striping, and there’s white/orange V-shaped soutache across the chest (for all of these photos, you can click to enlarge):

The left sleeve has a sewn-on “4.” The numeral is just one layer — orange — but the white lockdown stitching creates the illusion of white outlining:

The back has the team name in vertically arched lettering. Again, the white stitching provides the illusion of white outlining on the letterforms:

Inside the collar is a very nice Rawlings label with the company’s old slogan, “the finest in the field” (all lowercase, interestingly):

And what about the sporting goods shop from which the warm-up was ordered? There’s no label for the shop up near the collar, but there’s a little loop of a label sewn into one of the inner seams:

As you can see, the shop was called Bailey and Himes, and it was located in Champaign, Illinois. I Googled the name of the shop and came up with this sporting goods catalog. Also, Bailey and Himes published a book about football way back in 1924! Intriguing. Anyone know more?

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