Golf grips and gloves have long shared an intimate relationship, quite literally as they touch each other during play. Eaton (NYSE: ETN) division Golf Pride, the world’s largest manufacturer of grips, and style-forward glove brand Asher seek to deepen the hand to club connection by co-designing grips and gloves that color match.

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 opus The Great Gatsby, the Jordan Baker character matches her golf glove to the tint of her hair. The practice of shoes that complement belts is even older accessory tandem. Building on this tradition, Golf Pride and Asher have positioned golf grip and glove coordination as the next fashion frontier, co-designing a fall collection meant to be worn together that debuted today.

James Ledford, president of Golf Pride, discovered Asher organically when the brand first burst onto the scene and made a splash with camo and color pops. Liking what he saw, he ordered a few of their gloves. Thanks to golf course kismet, Ledford and Asher CEO Matt Smart would later be randomly paired together during an industry golf event at Pinehurst No. 2.

“There were no ulterior motives or business on the mind at all. It was just a weekend round of golf. We started talking about the connection of grip and glove to ball and player to club to ball from the performance and design side and ended up brainstorming fun ideas that we thought of over a four round of golf. At the end of the day, we walked away as friends,” Smart recollected.

Fast forward 18 months, Ledford reached out to Smart. He told him he thought there might be an opportunity for them to collaborate on a project. He suggested that the next time he was in North Carolina, they should meet up, check out Golf Pride’s innovation center and explore the possibility. From there the ball just started rolling.

“We were likeminded in a lot of ways in terms of how we saw design and both saw an opportunity. Grips and gloves are mostly designed separately from each other, nobody has tried to do something together,” Ledford said.

Both companies are heralding the collaboration as a first-of-its-kind partnership between a golf glove maker and a golf grip maker and the impact of the collaboration could create a new category of fashion-forward grip-glove combinations.

“The minute I could take something that was pure utility, like a golf grip and start adding some style elements to it—personally as a golfer I was really, really excited at inception and it’s just developed. This has never been done before. Will consumers be excited as I am about this? I think there is a demand,” Smart said.

“At Asher we believe there is a high need in Men’s style for monochromatic and understated details. We are seeing a growing appetite for that and that’s not just in apparel. We started with a glove and now where does that leak into—all the way to bags, hats, on-course and off-course. We are certainly seeing that and so something that has historically been equipment and pure utility, to see how consumers will express themselves in their grip, I’m really excited about,” he added.

The collection is inspired by the earthy elements of both brands’ hometowns (the mountains of Park City Utah and the Sandhills of North Carolina) with nods to the hues of pine needles, deep rich berries, copper dirt and trees that remain evergreen all year round. The end result, with the release date factoring in, features cognac, oxblood and spruce colorways, a quintessential autumn palette.

“Add a pumpkin spice latte in there and you have fall pretty much dialed,” Smart said.

Golf brand collabs in general have been heating up on the heels of buzzy team-ups such as Adidas X Waffle House last year and more recent ones like High Noon X TravisMathew and Sperry X Malbon. Ledford relates the surge in collabs in the space to golf culture permeating more into the mainstream as participation has ramped up.

“You see a lot more celebrities, singers and rappers getting into the game so I think golf is having a moment, it’s becoming a little cooler in the eyes of a lot of people and that’s probably what’s triggering this desire to explore collaborations,” Ledford said.

It’s the first time Golf Pride, who make 80-90% of tour pros grips, has gone the collab route. Ledford had seen brand team-ups executed in previous roles at Callaway and Starbucks SBUX and knew that when timing was right it would make sense for Golf Pride.

Expect to see more Golf Pride collabs in the pipeline and there are already a few in the works. The company believes grips are starting to be regarded similarly to footwear in terms of design possibilities, taking the product beyond performance and feel.

“This hasn’t historically been a big part of grip design but I’m seeing it more and more—there is a style element,” Ledford said.

Their MCC Teams product line, non-logoed but aimed at sports fans seeing to rep their fandom with certain colorways, was launched during the pandemic shutdown and was Golf Pride’s first foray into embracing the possibility of grips as style statements, laying the groundwork for taking the concept further with the Asher collaboration which will perhaps pave the way for future grip-glove combination.

“There is certainly a lot more opportunity to do more with that combination given how complimentary they are for every golfer in their golf swing. So, we’ll just see how far it takes us,” Ledford said.

As for Smart, he thinks there is unlimited runway ahead of this product launch and could envision Asher doing more collaborations down the line if another ‘game-recognizing-game’ scenario arises, where a synergy could be realized.