Football x fashion - untapped potential
We need to have a conversation about football’s relationship with fashion. From lifestyle pieces to touchline attire, football is finally tapping into its rich stylistic heritage, but I’m not confident it’s getting everything right.
Far and away the world's most popular sport, football’s cultural significance is unrivalled. Yet clubs and brands are continuing to link up with loud, brash, icon-heavy collabs, which embody all the energy of a bull in a china shop.
The football x fashion sphere is an open goal. The groundwork has been laid. The history, the grandeur and most pertinently of all the ability to connect to the human condition. It’s a designer's dream. So why are we still seeing clubs dropping the same tired templates?
A cash grab is the most obvious answer. Clubs know the worth of releasing merchandise, and fans, devoid of much choice, tend to vote with their wallets. It gives financial validation to these releases, but sometimes clubs just lack creative direction. They could be doing so much better.
Drama Calls recent collab with Manchester United and Adidas had all the makings of a seminal moment in the football x fashion conversation. A Manchester-based brand with a cult following in the streetwear scene linking up with the most successful club in England. The scope for revolutionising the way clubs connect with their fashion-conscious audience was limitless.
But instead of harnessing the creative but stripped-down graphic designs Drama Call have become synonymous with and bringing a quintessentially ‘United’ edge to it. They opted for an array of slogans and logos that did little to promote a culture.
There was, however, the start of an idea there, with the pop-up market, that created the sort of buzz and energy that streetwear brands have become famous for. But this was lost in translation, with a collection that felt disjointed and disingenuous. It spoke neither to United nor Drama Call.
Take Arsenal’s capsule collection for the Notting Hill Carnival, and you begin to see the potential of tapping into football’s roots in the community. Reworked pieces drew inspiration from Arsenal’s 2019/20 kit, itself a homage to the historic 1991 bruised banana kit, and remodelled them for a leisurewear audience - releasing bucket hats and tracksuit bottoms that showcase how football clubs can begin to move away from the club shop apparel, that whilst necessary is a closed off market that lacks much creativity.
Arsenal followed this up with another Carnival collection in 2022, showcasing a strong message and fostering a connection with its routes not only in London but, more specifically, North London. Consistent messaging that connects with the community whilst remaining true to the club's history is the golden ticket, and it’s one that many clubs are failing to get a handle on.
It’s not just where fans are concerned either, both Inter Milan and AC Milan have stolen a march on the matchday apparel scene with two collections that whilst they couldn’t be more different in their execution, have both made positive waves in the fashion scene.
Inter’s collaboration with Moncler exuded elegance, whilst AC Milan’s Off White varsity jackets stole the headlines when they came to London for their Champions League tie with Chelsea.
Inter reimagined what could be done with touchline outfits. Drawing on Moncler’s high fashion reputation to produce an outfit for manager Simone Inzaghi that played on the subtle stylishness of a well-fitted suit. The collection played down the need for iconography, instead letting the clothes do the talking. Whilst not a money spinner, the suit was custom made, it allowed Inter to engender a conversation around the club's standing as one of the fashion-conscious clubs of Europe. The quality of the product spoke for itself and helped Inter control the narrative around their club ethos, whereas clubs like Manchester United appeared desperate to intercept a market they had little grasp on.
AC Milan, meanwhile, showed that creativity can still stem from designs deemed loud or abrasive. With the 2026 World Cup around the corner, American influence in football is becoming ever more apparent, and AC Milan opted to lean on this by producing a set of varsity jackets ahead of their game with Chelsea.
Through this, they showed an awareness of where the market is going. Fans are consuming football in a more and more Americanised setting - the explosion of CBS, the influence of American players in Europe’s top-five leagues and the popularity of Barcelona’s NBA-style tunnel fits. AC Milan know this and, as a result, have become one of the leading voices in the football x fashion conversation.
Independent creatives like the Art of Football have linked up with several Premier League clubs, showing what can be done with club merchandise when left in the hands of those with their fingers on the creative pulse. But whilst they are leading a number of clubs into the light, it must still be said that inhouse there is so much more that can be done.
Soon clubs will learn to stop relying on their heritage and large audiences to create ill-thought-out money-spinning ventures into the world of fashion. But for now, they could do a lot worse than take influence from those around them by prioritising a strong, consistent message and learning from their audiences by tapping into the subcultures they align with.