“You didn't want to look like your old fella”, says Dave Hewitson, talking about dressing to go to the match in the late 70s.
Archive footage of the Kop and Gwladys Street end in the 60s shows a sea of suits and ties swaying in unison, but a decade later “wide leg pants and stack heel shoes” ruled the terraces, according to Dave. In a city that was seeing punk muscle its way past the remnants of Merseybeat on Mathew Street, this attire wasn’t going to fly with the teenagers wanting to make a point in front of the biggest audiences of all - the crowds at Anfield and Goodison.
The Anfield Road end and Park End are less storied when it comes to partisan support for Liverpool’s football teams. But both have played an important role in shaping the cultural identity of the city.
READ MORE: Wade Smith's two decades of shaping Liverpool style all started with a single trainer
“It sort of became a bit of a cat walk” says Dave, thinking back to the late 70s when the two Liverpool and Everton stands at times had more eyes on the latest fashion than the action taking place on the pitch - providing room for a revolution that’s still felt in the city today. Out went the “big wide jeans” and acrylic shirts, in came “tight leg jeans, small collar shirts, and Slazenger and Pringle jumpers.”
A style mushrooming among teens going to the match, this was the early days of what later became known as ‘casuals’. It’s a fashion story that’s fuelled by rebellion, frustration and recession and one that later morphed into a trans-European gold rush - where the rarest and most exotic sportswear was the grand prize.
A new exhibition centred on wider football and ‘casual’ culture is set to launch next week at the Walker Art Gallery, curated in part by Dave Hewitson, an author who helped establish the ‘80s Casuals’ clothing brand. It’s an exhibition that tells the story of how a desire to be different went to new levels thanks to a European passport - leaving a distinguished mark on the city for generations to come.
'The more obscure ones the better'
In the late 70s, you could count the number of sports shops in Liverpool on one hand, according to Dave. At the time nobody was wearing training shoes or tracksuits - or any sportswear as day-to-day attire.
All that changed in bid to stop school shoes being chewed up in games of street football, much to the relief of parents across the city. Many teenagers owned a pair of the humble Adidas Samba which would be worn for street games, but gradually the three-striped training shoes started filtering their way into everyday wear.
Dave told the ECHO: “The next thing you wore them to the match. Then everybody started wearing them.”
Later in the summer of 1980 a friend followed Liverpool away for a friendly in Europe and returned home with a pair of trainers with Velcro straps. Suddenly the cookie-cutter samba no longer sufficed as match going fans wanted to distinguish themselves by what was on their feet.
Much of this new obsession with having the newest or most expensive trainers was sparked by a trip to Germany in 1981, says Dave. He told the ECHO: “Germany is the home of Adidas and when Liverpool played away to Bayern Munich three of four thousand went over.
“2000 of them were kids, between 16-20, and they all thought they were getting a pair of training shoes when on the trip.”
In the sport shops in Munich the latest Adidas, unavailable in the UK, were on offer, but often were the price of a week’s wages back then, around £30. Working at the time Dave said most of his savings would go towards new trainers secured on European awaydays, but others took matters into their own hands - quite literally, adding: “That's where exploiting these shops that had pairs on show came in - a few of them got nicked.”
Landing back in Liverpool, fans with new trainers returned as though heroes of a daring transatlantic voyage, sporting the exoitic spoils of their trip when on the streets of Liverpool. Dave added: "People would be asking ‘where'd you get your trainers from, where'd you get your training shoes from’.
“It all developed from there and the more obscure ones the better. Then it moved on to sportswear with people looking for Fila and Sergio Tacchini tracksuits.”
'Taking our lives into our own hands'
When it came to the lengths people would go to uncover the latest and most obscure trainers, Dave tells the story of his friend and The Farm frontman Peter Hooton and his trip to Paris in the 1980s. He told the ECHO: "They’d been told there was an Adidas centre in Paris. So they spent two to three days walking around Paris asking French people ‘ou est adidas centre?’ Where is the adidas centre.
“Everyone just looked at them blankly. There wasn't one there.”
Travelling from Paris, England were playing in Basel in Switzerland a few days later. Being near the border with Germany, it presented Dave with an opportunity to travel into the home of Adidas and load up any new trainers they could find.
Dave said: “Going to watch England in the 80s was a dangerous thing to do for a Scouser due to the rivalry with all of the English clubs. But we did that so we could specifically go across the border to Germany and get a pair of Adidas grand slam and Adidas Grand Prix.
“When we came home that was the most exciting thing about the trip. Going down there and taking our lives into our own hands sort of thing to watch England and go and get these training shoes.”
Dave added: “There were guys who made a career of it for a few years, taking a big bag away with them and getting what they can and selling it on - going away three or four times a year to get training shoes.
“And by 1984, that’s when the big designer brands came in. My brother in law would come back with shoes with a £200 price tag and you'd never heard of them. It would be some mad Italian name on some silk shirts.
“There was a lot of entrepreneurship at the time. I think a legacy coming from that is why there's a sports store on every corner now in Liverpool."
In the 1980s, Wade Smith opened its first store in Liverpool city centre selling trainers and sportswear. The shop would go on to have a huge influence on Scouse fashion, later stocking some of the biggest brands in the world.
'We'll always do our own thing'
These days at Goodison and Anfield, fashion has moved on and brands like Montirex and North Face are some of the most common. But there’s still aspects of early casual culture that stick out in a contemporary sense.
These days you will sometimes see as many Benfica or Villarreal caps on the Kop among the Liverpool attire - a memento of an awayday trip, just like a new pair of adidas or sportswear used to be. In Dave’s view, this development of fashion is the “flame being carried forward” by the next generation.
He added: “We didn't want to dress like our dad. So people going to the game now are probably the same.
“They're going to have their own take on fashion. If that's about going to the match in a black jacket, that's their style. Let them get on with it. Maybe 20 years down the line people will be writing about that.”
“The hat thing is a good interpretation - people in Liverpool having their own take on fashion. We'll always do our own thing.”
Art of the Terraces runs from Nov 5 2022 to Mar 12 2023 at the Walker Art Gallery.
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