It’s New York fashion week, February 2023, and there’s a lull between shows. If most of my colleagues are using the time to catch up on a much-neglected inbox, or visiting a favourite store, I’m curled up in a ball of anxiety in my hotel room praying for the intermittent wifi to hold up, and willing on a team of 11 people I don’t know 3,500 miles away. I scream when Bukayo Saka scores a penalty to get us back in the game.
‘Us’ is Arsenal, the football club I have now supported in earnest for over 20 years. We didn’t win the game in February (it finished a bruising 1-3 to rivals Man City) but if it had been five years ago, I would have kept my hotel room experience to myself when back amongst the fashion crowd. Instead, my viewing break was front row chatter at the next show. Fashion and football have come together like never before.
You can see it on the catwalk - with football shirts popping up in shows ranging from Martine Rose to Ahluwalia, Balenciaga, Wales Bonner, Koche and Pharrell Williams’ Louis Vuitton. Brands are also working with football teams. Stella McCartney (clearly a woman of style and taste) collaborated with Adidas last year to create a collection with Arsenal women, Off-White now hold the very fancy title of Style and Culture Curator for the men’s and women’s team at AC Milan, dressing the players pre-match, and Dior have designed formalwear for the Paris St Germain team to wear.
It’s at international level too. Nigo made a shirt for the Japan team worn in the World Cup in 2022, while Wales Bonner created Jamaica’s kits, which will be worn by the women’s team at the World Cup this year. Fashion-friendly celebrities have started to attend matches too. In the last year, the Emirates has hosted Bella Hadid, Kendrick Lamar and Kim Kardashian and family. And then there’s Blokecore, the TikTok style trend where football shirts are as central as drinking pints.
The rise of the women’s game - particularly since the Lionesses won the Euros last year - was a crucial turning point. Around 365m people watched the Euros final, with the organisers of the Women's World Cup this summer hoping for up to two billion. The Women's Super League (WSL) is growing too. In 2021 Sky and BBC announced a three year deal to show WSL games, thought to be worth around £8m per season. Forecasters say that women’s football could be worth £500m by 2033.
Fashion brands, always on the lookout for ways to reach consumers, have spotted an opportunity. Daniel Yaw-Miller, senior editorial associate at The Business of Fashion, who writes primarily about the intersection between fashion and sport, points to a link-up between Manchester City and workwear brand The Fold as a sign of things to come. 'Brands are beginning to work with these really impressive professional women's teams who are vying to become the teams of their generation,' he says.
A change in how most women dress also has a part to play. 'The streetwear influences of recent years are important in the crossover between fashion and football,' says Christelle Kocher, the designer behind Koche. 'The style is more casual and football clothing is part of this new fashion era.' Notably, a lot of the brands who fit with this shift - Wales Bonner, Ahluwalia, Martine Rose - are technically menswear, or certainly genderless. Rose's designs are sold equally to men and women - football-style shirts included.
Stylist Kiera Liberati has worked with England players including Leah Williamson and Chloe Kelly, as well as commentator Alex Scott, and says there’s now more focus on female players off the field. '[Previously], it was assumed female footballers, or any female sportswoman, didn't care that much about clothes.' she says. '[Now people realise] they do look fantastic and they have their own sense of style.' Scott, with her regular appearances on the BBC and Sky, is a case in point. 'She is so commercially viable.' says Liberati. 'I put her in an old-school Burberry look and, two weeks later, they sent her loads of stuff.'
Felicia Pennant, the features editor at Matches, launches Season, a zine which brings football and fashion together, in 2016, and has watched the change as it happened. Back then, following football whilst working in fashion was still unusual. 'When I used to go to football from work sometimes, I would bring a shirt to change into,' she says. 'Now, I have a Chelsea jacker [that I wear to the office].' For the Women's Euro Final afterparty last year, she wore a corset made from England shirts created by the emerging designer Hattier Crowther.
Like me, Pennant is happy that our worlds are coming together, but keen that alliances come from a genuine place, not just as a way for brands and players to cash in. She says the Spanish player Hector Bellerin - who is on the cover of the most recent Season - is the benchmark, recalling a conversation she had with him about the beloved luxury avant-garde brand Maison Marginal. 'I asked, "Do you have Tabi boots?" and he was like, "Yeah." That made me think, "You're a real one, these are the real tests."
Of course, you can be drawn to football's aesthetic and culture without being, as the song goes, football crazy, football mad. 'Football is the most popular sport [in this country], and very culturally diverse,' says Kocher. 'I find this notion very interesting. Football has turned out to be a creative environment in which I can experiment with my ideas.'
Mattine Rose has long talked about how the positive environment around football inspires her. Her fan shirt, released by Nike in 2021, was based on the Lost Lionesses - the largely forgotten group of women who travelled to Mexico to play in the 1971 World Cup. Speaking to Showstudio, she said football, 'highlights the power of youth culture. It can change politics, it's very powerful.' Another project with Nike is set to launch around the World Cup.
Sofia Printer, the founder of streetwear brand Aries, has a different perspective. 'As much as my life has been linked to football, I'm not really that interested in the sport itself.' she says. Instead, she has been inspired by the style of the Casuals, the smartly dressed football fans who watched games in the Eighties.
'The aesthetic is quite dandy, quite flamboyant.' she adds. 'There's a massive space for the first fashion brand to truly crack the football community.' says Yaw-Miller. 'When you go to games these days, you can definitely see the way fans are dressed, especially in London clubs, is shifting.' Kocher believes an alliance between the two industries makes each side better. 'Fashion tells a narrative about the future and is inspired by football because it is the perfect blend of tradition and modernity,' she says. 'These two worlds are increasingly opening their doors to each other.'
This article was originally published in the September issue of ELLE UK.
