LOS ANGELES — So I wasn’t holding out much hope that the Murricane would touch down in a Marina del Rey conference room last month to review spring 2018 designs for the collection that bears his name. (“Bill is notoriously unreliable and lives by his own schedule,” a media representative for the label had already warned me via email. “There’s a chance, but you never can be 100 percent.”)
Launched online in September in partnership with humor and entertainment website theChive.com and the six golf-loving Murray brothers — Brian, Ed, Bill, Andy, John and Joel — William Murray Golf is a celebrity clothing line. But it’s a celebrity clothing line the way Bill Murray is a celebrity: it doesn’t take itself too seriously, it has heart and whimsy and performance where it counts, and it’s full of random, unexpected delights.
The Murray in the mix this first Monday in April is Joel — the Los Angeles-based writer-director-actor, youngest of nine Murrays and the chief executive of Murray Bros. LLC. He’s here to review proposed design ideas, which he’ll then disseminate to his five brothers for comments, suggestions and tweaks.
Along the way, he and label executives, including William Murray Golf co-founder and CEO Kerry Michaels, walk me through designs, explaining the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) references to the family, the Murray brothers’ love of golf and their most famous sibling.
Now here’s a look at some William Murray Golf designs and the young brand’s future:
Plaid men
One element that ties the collection together is the green, navy blue and red Murray family tartan, a plaid pattern that appears on every garment. Some pieces, like the long-sleeve button-front shirt with four-way stretch or shorts with extra roomy pockets (“So your golf balls don’t fall out when you sit in the golf cart,” says Joel), are completely tarted up in the tartan. On others, the pops of plaid are barely noticeable accents — edging a single sleeve on a short-sleeve polo or the coin/ball-marker pockets of boldly patterned shorts.
Knocking a few over (not back)
Michaels says the polo shirt bearing the “Old Fashioned” highball glass design — it was originally inspired by the fictional “Suntory” ad campaign in Sofia Coppola’s 2003 film “Lost in Translation” — was the bestseller of William Murray Golf’s debut collection.
Joel points to it as a good example of how brother Bill helps the creative process. “We all liked the design when we first saw it,” he recounts. “But Billwas the one going: ‘Yeah, yeah, but drinks spill, so why don’t you have every eighth one spilled? Why don’t you knock a couple of them over?'”
Rakish wrought iron
“I wear this one a lot,” Joel says, as he held aloft a polo shirt with a bold, repeating pattern called “Sandy Tiles.” He points to the circle in the center of a tile. “These are golf balls,” he says before pointing to the edge of the tile. “And these are the ends of sand rakes.
“It sort of started out being a design that came from wrought iron,” he explains. “We were talking about a certain city that was an inspiration to us. We decided we weren’t going to mention the city where Billy lives. But let’s just say we were looking at all this wrought iron in Charleston, and that’s how it came about.” (Bill is part-owner of the Charleston, S.C., RiverDogs minor league baseball team and widely reported to be a part-time resident of that city.)
(Exploding) mums of the world
This popular pattern from the debut fall 2016 collection might look like polka dots or starbursts from afar, but a closer look reveals a floral design with the occasional exploding spray of petals. Called “Cinderella Story,” it was inspired by a scene from the 1980 comedy “Caddyshack,” in which Bill Murray’s Carl Spackler tees off on a row of clubhouse mums with a serrated grass whip to great comic effect.
The new design, “Tropical Mums,” can be seen in a recently released spring 2017 polo shirt as well as a short-sleeve button-front shirt coming later in the season.
Getting into characters
Kind of like an all-Bill-Murray-movie-character version of “Where’s Waldo?,” the “Playing Around” pattern, one of the new spring 2017 patterns that dropped April 25, rounds up riffs on some of Bill’s most memorable characters and drops them on the golf course.
The many mini-Murrays include Spackler (“Caddyshack”), Steve Zissou (from Wes Anderson’s 2004 film “The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou,” he’s in the red knit cap) and “Ghostbusters'” Peter Venkman (proton pack still strapped to his back).
Quirky camo
“It’s your regular camouflage pattern except we put pin flags in it, and now it’s golf-themed,” Joel says of the spring 2017 design. “And if we put a couple of rakes in there, it becomes a sand trap. It’s basic camo but with some fun going on.”
Michaels says Bill Murray gave her some input about tweaking the design for future seasons. “He loved it,” she says, “but he really wants us to try and incorporate some animal into the design. We suggested deer, but he thinks that’s a little bit too expected. So what about foxes? Or alligators?”
Lake Turtles
In late November 2016, the brothers convened at the brand’s headquarters in Austin, Texas, for a design meeting, and the conversation turned to memories of lakeside vacations.
“I was one of the youngest ones,” Joel explains. “So when the nieces and nephews woke up at the crack of dawn, it was my job to keep them quiet so everybody else could be hungover and stay in bed. We’d take them out in a rowboat to go ‘turtle fishing,’ and the rule was that they couldn’t make any noise or they’d scare the turtles.”
That story is reflected in a proposed spring 2018 design called that has the brand’s “faceless man” logo sitting in a rowboat alongside his golf clubs, with a turtle not far away.
The apparel is available online only through williammurraygolf.com and consists of polos, short- and long-sleeve button-front shirts and shorts.
