If the Beckham Netflix documentary has taught us anything — aside from Victoria’s laudable commitment against the sport — it’s that fashion and football are a brilliant double act. The beautiful game might have taken Becks out of Leytonstone, but fashion polished his bleached blond locks into a gold mine commodity.
I particularly enjoyed the gentle trolling from Romeo (who had a stint at the Arsenal youth academy) at the series close, wearing a Gunners hoodie to practise penalties. “Take that off,” Becks scoffed. Let’s hope he didn’t spy Mia Regan’s look from Paris Fashion Week; Romeo’s girlfriend propped up the front row in a top from the new Arsenal Women’s away kit, the second drop from Stella McCartney’s Adidas collaboration with the club.
Polyester football shirts at fashion shows? It’s happening. In London, Vogue’s Naomi Smart turned up in a blue Inter Milan top; Grace Wales Bonner’s molten silver Adidas Sambas were spotted on fans who snapped up a pair before they sold out (she also designed the Jamaican team’s strip), while the new kitten heel is actually a Martine Rose Nike football boot mule hybrid. Even Ian Wright was an opening model for Labrum.
The link between football and fashion is coming ever sharper into view with clubs eyeing creative partnerships to elevate and broaden their offering beyond the usual terrace merch. It’s an unsurprisingly lucrative move, the football apparel industry is forecast to reach around £90 billion by 2028. Earlier this summer, Manchester United signed a record-breaking 10-year sponsorship deal with Adidas worth £900 million.
A coterie of London clubs are upping their fashion game with sharp new kits and collaborations. See Walthamstow FC’s collaboration with the William Morris Gallery, utilising a classic print motif of the E17-born icon of the arts and crafts movement. This was the brainchild of Wood Street Walls, a Walthamstow-based art collective, which has signed on to create three years of the Morris kit. The aim is to also raise funds for a women’s team, alongside supporting the men’s Isthmian League Division One North.
Meanwhile Crystal Palace is the first Premier League side to hire a creative director, Kenny Annan-Jonathan, who will oversee kits and fashion partnerships. His first collection, released later this year, aims to create “products that go beyond typical sports team merch and grow the team’s fan base”. Arsenal has dipped a similarly stylish studded boot into the market, first with its retro-infused third kit (a riff off the 1982/83 season shirt), and then with its new McCartney women’s kit.
Ellie Pithers, contributing editor for British Vogue as well as a lifelong Gunners fan, offers that “there has been a shift in how people are wearing them, but also in the way they are marketed”. The third kit’s adverts show the tops not on the football pitch, but worn by real people and players in a retro way. Pithers has a theory on the link between her two loves. “Football and fashion are hugely similar, both are morphing into a highly visible modern form of entertainment that is very media savvy. There’s a confluence in terms of art and commerce. But at their best both are really about community.”
She cites Kim Kardashian (who took her son to the Emirates Stadium earlier this year) as potential inspiration for some fans — “the younger people at Arsenal are definitely making more effort in what they wear to the games. Girls and women with very glamorous nails, eyelashes and big hair wearing Arsenal shirts with cycling shorts”. The newer, burgeoning market for women’s football sartorial support is something that came into sharp view this summer with the rapacious demand for a Mary Earps goalkeeper shirt.
Photographer Lydia Garnett, who plays in Hackney’s Goalposts League, recently created Fans Zine, a photography project inspired by “amazing characters with great style”. Garnett cast “people I play football with, people who are big fans, people who have previously played a high level” for the shoot, where they were asked to bring their favourite looks. The project allowed Garnett to create “authentic imagery”. She says: “I often find that women’s sports campaigns don’t really speak to the true scope for personality and individual style that I see around me when I’m playing or watching a game.” This shift in a less snobbish attitude towards kit-as-leisure-wear has been fuelled in part by our love of sportswear for anything, anywhere.
Professor Andrew Groves, director of the Westminster menswear archive, University of Westminster, highlights that “before the Nineties there really wasn’t a market for adult replica shirts... In the last 20 years sportswear has become the dominant language of fashion at all levels, this has meant the rise of the fashion football shirt”. A hybrid example is the Fashion East alumna Ancuta Sarca who showed her upcycled footwear created from old football boots and trainers at London Fashion Week. “I loved the practicality of trainers and their aesthetic,” she says. “But I wanted to create something with them that is the opposite, more feminine and chic.” Her work also underscores an uncomfortable point — the groaning quantities of sportswear produced (typically from oil-based synthetic fabrics).
“By working with readymade unwanted trainers, we reduce the supply chain by not having to fabricate new textiles or leather — which also reduces waste as some of these products would typically end up being thrown away,” she says. The increased frequency and demand for new kits over the past decade or so has essentially created an off-shoot football fast fashion industry, not to mention the cost — a Premier League shirt now skirts around £100. Christopher Raeburn has an ongoing project, whereby he stages community workshops where makers can turn old shirts into new bags.
Groves offers that “there is a huge issue with both that needs to be addressed in terms of production, consumption, and circularity. The Westminster menswear archive is currently in discussion with RÆBURN on their KIT:BAG by RÆBURN initiative with regards to future collaborations across cultural exhibitions and community programming in order to bring circular design solutions to the sports industry. They are working with some major sportswear manufacturers and football teams to find more sustainable solutions, so I’m hopeful that in the future these issues will be appropriately addressed”.
Until then, the glow-up continues. 50 Cent is the new sponsor of the under-14 girls’ team at AFC Rumney in Cardiff. Their updated kit includes his G Unit branding.
Shop the fashion footie look:
Walthamstow FC
Walthamstow jacket, £59.99, wmgallery.shop
Adidas x Wales Bonner
Adidas x Wales Bonner, leather trim knit trainers, £155, matchesfashion.com
Stella McCartney x Adidas
Stella McCartney x Adidas, player jersey, £110, adidas.co.uk
Martine Rose x Nike
Martine Rose x Nike, Shox Mule MR4, £185, shop.doverstreetmarket.com
