“It’s an honor to be able to give to the people that I care about,” says Jones, who has been friends with Travis Kelce since they were children
Aric Jones
Ten years ago, Aric Jones was working a marketing job and his best friend, Travis Kelce, wasn’t the Chiefs’ premiere tight end.
Fast forward a decade (and three Chiefs Super Bowl rings for Kelce), and Jones, now 33, runs his own clothing brand Homebred Legends, which he tells PEOPLE was inspired by his longtime friendship with the NFL star.
“I wanted to have something that I felt like represented us and gave us a name,” Jones says. “My motivation was my friends. It really just started from just wanting to give us something to have, something to be proud of, a platform to be able to do things and also express my creativity.”
Homebred Legends, often referred to as “Homebred” colloquially, was Jones’ answer to an opening he saw in the streetwear space, especially as somebody already interested in clothing and design.
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“I was like, ‘How can I still pay homage to the Heights? How can I still pay homage to home and still keep it broad enough to where everybody could [relate]?” Jones says of how he first landed on the brand’s ethos.
“Homebred Legend is a synonym for neighborhood hero, neighborhood superstar,” he explains.
Jones and Kelce first met as children in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, where they both grew up. Kelce was about 6, says Jones, while he was just 4.
Jones spent the first 19 years of his life in Cleveland Heights before moving to Nashville for college, and then later to Kansas City in 2015.
“I wanted to give Cleveland Heights, a very fashion-forward city, a face and a space in the fashion world, and that’s how it basically got started,” Jones says. “The core values of Homebred are to create, influence and unify, and be able to do that through fashion. This was created for my friends to have something that we could all do. It just so happens that my friend is Travis Kelce.”
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The Chiefs tight end is a proud supporter of the brand, often wearing Jones’ designs. During his Kelce Car Jam in Kansas City on Oct. 5, Kelce was seen sporting a Homebred hat.
The way Jones’ friends have rallied organically around Homebred means everything to him, he says, and he loves to share the merchandise with his inner circle — including Taylor Swift.
“She has stuff, of course. Why wouldn’t she? That’s family. Once you’re in the family, you’re fully engraved in this anyway,” he says. “So it’s like, why not do that for the people that you care the most about? It’s an honor.”
Aric Jones and Taylor Swift watch the Kansas City Chiefs play the Denver Broncos at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium
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Jones also applauds Kelce, and notes that his lifelong friend’s “superpower” is actually something that his mother, Donna, once pointed out.
“I think the greatest thing about Travis is his gravitational force that he has to just pull everybody in. And his superpower is — and his mom said it one time and it completely resonated with me — is that when he’s talking to somebody, he makes that person feel like they’re the only person in the room. Everybody feels that Travis is their homeboy.”
It’s that level of humility in Kelce, says Jones, that speaks to the core of his brand — and the reason why he keeps pushing forward.
“It’s Play-Doh — you can mold it into whatever it is that you want to make it fit to you,” he says of Homebred. “I’m doing this because I just have an itch. I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.”
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