Long Island fashion experts make their picks on what Islanders fan-designed jersey they like most
Fern Mallis, left, and Marcela Pinzon, right, both fashion experts from Long Island, each selected the Islanders fan-designed jersey with the "NY" logo on the front as their favorite among the eight finalists. Credit: Getty Images; NY Islanders; Howard Schnapp
The fashion verdict is in: Two Long Island-based experts agree on their top choice for the Islanders’ fan-designed third jersey for the 2027-28 NHL season.
Their pick: The jersey design with a hockey stick in the shape of an NY.
That design is one of eight that an Islanders committee chose as finalists out of more than 80,000 submissions by fans in a contest the club has been running since July 8. The first round of bracket-style voting at www.newyorkislanders.com/ fanvote started on Wednesday and ends on Friday at 5 p.m.
Newsday asked two fashion experts to rate the finalists, which include two versions with the Islanders’ old fisherman logo, two featuring a lighthouse, two with “ISLANDERS” or “ISLES” across the chest and two with an “NY” logo with the “Y” depicted as a hockey stick.
“I like the version with the hockey stick incorporated into the NY logo,” said Fern Mallis of Southampton, an industry legend who created New York Fashion Week and is known as the “Godmother of Fashion.”
“The rest of them just look like boring and like a hundred things you’ve probably seen,” she said. “I thought that using the hockey stick as part of it, for the logo, was very clever. But what I would have done is in the bottom base of it, instead of those little dashes or whatever, that’s where I would have written ‘Islanders.’ ”
Marcela Pinzon, founder of The Fashionable Stylista — a design school for first grade through high school students in Syosset that also has a new shuttle bus that has been transformed into a mobile classroom — found two of the designs attractive but eventually gravitated to the hockey stick concept.
“From a fashion and design perspective, the two concepts that stand out most to me are the [fisherman] design and the NY design, in both of their colorways,” Pinzon wrote in an email to Newsday. “I really love the color story of the [fisherman] design. This version caught my attention because of the pop of teal paired with the Islanders’ orange. It feels fresh and modern while still maintaining a connection to the team’s identity. The orange version reverses that impact and creates something much bolder. Both feel balanced and visually interesting without becoming too busy.
“The NY design stands out to me for its simplicity and cleanliness. The more I look at it, the more it is becoming my top choice. The oversized NY graphic is strong and immediately recognizable. More detail doesn’t necessarily make a design stronger. A great jersey should have an immediate visual impact, a strong color story and a clear identity.”
The creator of the overall winning design will receive a team-signed third jersey and tickets to the 2027-28 game in which the jersey makes its on-ice debut. The jersey cannot be used in the 2026-27 season because it takes two years to make an NHL jersey and get the design approved by the league.
“I’m impressed that 80,000 people took to pen and paper and tried to design something,” Mallis said. “That’s very impressive, and also testimony to the love of their team.”
Asked what she thought it would take to get fans to buy the new jersey when it is available, Mallis said: “Winning. Win the game, win the trophy, win the season. That’s what sells this stuff more than anything.”
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.
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