Everyone, their mother (and the prime minister) has a pair of adidas Sambas and some Nike shorts in the drawer — but have we been sleeping on Umbro? The British brand, which this year celebrates its 100th anniversary, is being honoured with a retrospective courtesy of the Westminster Menswear Archive, an impressive collection built up by the fashion department of the University of Westminster.
In a large, concrete warehouse-esque space in Marylebone, the brand’s history is regaled on two floors; starting with it’s 1924 founding in Wilmslow, Cheshire and tracing its early decades which saw the diamond-logo label focus on working with sports teams and ensuring the champions of the FA cup were wearing Umbro, by dressing each team. Football jerseys and athletics wear from the 30s, 40s and 50s are displayed in cabinets, before the nineties Britpop wave (and in particular, the Oasis brothers in their Umbro Manchester City shirts) saw sportswear cross to leisurewear and, later, fashion – Umbro, as this exhibition lays out, was at the forefront.
