When Kathy Coles’ friend moved from Maryland to Texas, they both wondered which state flag would be more popular.
Then Coles’ friend told her that she found Maryland state flag leggings — of all things — in a store in Texas.
“It was decided,” Coles said: Maryland’s flag was more prevalent.
Kevin Barnett may have grown up in Connecticut, but he “couldn’t tell you jack sh- about the Connecticut state flag,” he said. As for Maryland, where he’s lived for 30 years, Barnett likes the flag’s “interplay of the two themes” and the “checkerboard yellow,” he noted.
The Maryland state flag doesn’t just fly at courthouses. It’s in team logos and at sports bars, on public transit and state government emblems. It’s synonymous with Marylanders’ identity, and “maybe a part of it is that it’s just unique,” said Ali von Paris, the founder of Route One Apparel.
The flag’s standout design comes from the shield of Cecil Calvert’s coat of arms Cecil Calvert was the second Lord Baltimore, and he combined the black and gold of his father’s shield with the red and white of his grandmother’s Crossland shield, according to Zachary Gardiner, who published a paper on the flag’s history in the North American Vexillological Association journal.
“It breaks a lot of the rules of good flag design,” he said. “But it’s distinctive, and that’s one of the things that allows you to design a good flag and not follow all the guidelines.”
Under Armour entered a partnership with the University of Maryland in 2010, and the flag was placed on the football team’s new Maryland Pride uniforms. After the university joined the Big 10 Conference in 2013, the flag drew attention from football fans across the country.
“It was about being prideful of your state, being prideful of the university and being prideful of all the people that have put on the Maryland football jersey before us,” said Randy Edsall, the football team’s former head coach.
Marylanders may be proud, but they’re aware that outsiders may not feel the same.
“Maryland has always had a somewhat inferiority complex in terms of being small and being ignored,” said Jack Lowe, the former president of the Chesapeake Bay Flag Association. The flag’s popularity made Marylanders “feel like we’re first class, which we didn’t always think.”
The flag’s popularity also has been lucrative for merchants. Maryland-themed online store Route One Apparel, founded in 2010, has sold more than 4,000 types of flag-themed items since they’ve been in business.
In July of 2012, von Paris put the Maryland flag on a bikini. She sold 1,000 advance orders of them .
“People were like, ‘Whoa, this is so cool. I want more of this,’” she said. “That is when I realized: OK, there’s definitely a niche here for Maryland flags and Maryland- themed apparel.
“I can attest that ”Marylanders today, 99.9% of them, look at that flag and they see it as unity,” von Paris said. “And I see it as a very iconic pattern that all Marylanders are unified around. People may have differing opinions on Maryland politics, but they’ll still like the flag.”
Waleed Sabir, a 24-year-old medical student at Rush University in Chicago, said he associated Maryland with crabs, Old Bay, and the flag. On a recent afternoon, he examined a stuffed animal with a flag on it at E.C. Pops in Fells Point.
Sabir’s friend, Joe Cordziel, a 24-year-old medical student at the University of Maryland, said the flag was popular with many of his fellow students.
“People at the school hype up Maryland,” he said.
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