The Open, Whiskey, and Windbreakers: Inside the Malbon x Bushmills Collab Built for Golf’s Cultural Crossover
As Royal Portrush returns to the spotlight for the Open, Malbon Golf and Bushmills tap into Irish heritage with a collection that’s as much about storytelling as it is about style.
The Open has returned to Royal Portrush, and it comes home to a place that doesn’t need to fake depth. County Antrim’s coastline, with its mythic cliffs and centuries-old stories soaked in salt air and Bushmills, isn’t just scenery; it’s a movie setting. So when a visionary golf brand like Malbon lines up a collection with one of the oldest distilleries on Earth, it doesn’t feel like a marketing play. It feels like a match made in heaven.
You can’t fake heritage. And you can’t fake cool. Bushmills and Malbon know this. That’s why their latest collaboration doesn’t lean on nostalgia or trends. Instead, it lets the textures do the talking, literally. Woven through the collection is a reimagined version of traditional Irish plaid, native to County Antrim, flipped in Malbon’s signature contemporary cut. It’s culture that you wear.
This isn’t the first time Malbon and Bushmills have linked up. But timing the collection to coincide with the 2025 Open Championship, which tees off at Portrush for only the third time in history, raises the stakes. Golf’s cultural reset has been unfolding slowly and steadily, with more players caring about style and more brands treating the sport as a canvas for their ideas.
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For Bushmills, this isn’t about reinventing itself; it doesn’t need to, it’s about welcoming us into the clubhouse in 2025. The distillery dates back over 400 years, and it would be easy to lean heavily on tradition, but what’s clever is how the partnership resists the temptation to do the obvious. This is a modern wardrobe built for modern golf, worn as comfortably on the dunes of the North Coast or in the streets of Brooklyn.
And for Malbon, whose growth has mirrored golf’s broader cultural reawakening, it’s another reminder that they don’t just make clothes, they make context. Malbon carved its niche by turning golf into a vibe, not just a sport. Through strategic collaborations with Coca Cola, Nike, and FootJoy, the brand has helped rewrite who gets to look good on the course and how. This Bushmills collection might be its most geographically grounded collection yet, but it still carries global weight.
I’ve said this many times, golf’s not just growing, it’s evolving. The post-pandemic boom brought people in. But it’s fashion, lifestyle, and social capital that are keeping them. And collaborations like this, anchored in time and place but styled for anywhere, are what make that evolution stick.
Of course, the cynics will call it merch. A whiskey brand and a golf label, selling hats and flasks during a major. But that misses the point. This isn’t about slapping two logos together. It’s about storytelling. And in a summer where Northern Ireland is back on the sporting map, with Portrush playing host to the world, this collection threads heritage and hype into something with purpose.
Let’s not pretend this is just another week in golf. Portrush is different. The Open is different. And the culture around the game is more alive than ever. This collection doesn’t just commemorate that, it contributes to it.
And maybe that’s what Bushmills and Malbon have figured out better than most. That blending old and new isn’t a conflict; it’s a craft. Just like a good whiskey.
The collection is available now at Bushmills.com/malbon and malbongolf.com, and is also available at the Bushmills Distillery.
Thanks for reading, David Skilling.
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