Over the past decade, we have seen fashion and football fall in love. Every fashion brand and their Nan have joined the great football gold rush and we have been left with more “new” and “exciting” collabs than we can handle. The issue is, with these “new” and “exciting” collabs, is that a lot of them don’t appreciate the depth of the football culture. Brands charge into a complex world with no roadmap, slapping logos on jerseys and re-telling tired stories of “footballing heritage”. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. What if brands actually took the time to understand football culture? What if clubs only signed off on collaborations that resonated with their story? What if football-fashion collabs actually made sense? Here are five we would love to see.
Fred Perry is a British icon. The fabled laurel wreaths have adorned the chests of young Britons up and down the land for more than half a century. The upper-left torso of mods, casuals, skinheads, rude girls, of Amy, Mike, Freddie and Terry were all decorated with that same broken circle. It’s a football fashion staple, too. Go to any ground in Britain and you’ll see the famous twin-tipped polo buttoned up to a hundred chins, fans subtly underlining their allegiance via the two coloured lines along each hem. If British football had a uniform, it would be made by Fred.
So, if Fred Perry is a British icon worn by British subcultures and British football fans at the British football, why are we suggesting that they collab with RSC Anderlecht, the biggest team in Belgium? It’s a fair question. It’s because last time they did it, they produced some all-time teamwear. In the late 1960s, Fred got the call from across the Channel to manufacture kits for Anderlecht, as well as their rivals Club Bruges and Standard Liege. The result, a typically elegant centre-badge Fred design in explosive RSCA purple, is one of football’s greatest forgotten gems. 2023 is the year to re-up this collab and get Fred back in the beautiful game.
Loewe is Spain’s most successful luxury brand. Real Madrid is Spain’s most successful football club. In 1905, Loewe were granted a Royal Warrant of Appointment by King Alfonso XIII. 15 years later, Alfonso XIII granted Madrid FC the title “Real” (royal) as a show of his support. Casa Loewe Madrid, the brand’s flagship store, is just off the capital’s Paseo de la Castellana. The Santiago Bernabeu is 10 minutes north. You couldn’t make up a more perfect football brand story.
Real Madrid have an aura of wealth around them that no other club can match. No matter how hard PSG, Juventus or Bayern try, the spotless white army at La Casa Blanca have an untouchable grandeur that borders on the perverse. For most people, this perpetual exhibition of elitism is a turn off – Super League, Perez, €60m on a 16-year-old etc. – but it does leave the club in a unique position in the fashion world. No-one else can match a fashion house for luxury. No other club can operate on that level. Lean into it and they could make something unprecedented. Two cultural titans of the Spanish capital, coming together to create footballing opulence. The most luxurious football fashion collab there’s ever been.
Bologna F.C. 1909 & C.P. Company
The first thing they’d need is a team to kit out. Who better than their hometown club of Bologna? Massimo Osti founded the brand as Chester Perry in 1971 and, for the last 50 years, C.P. Company has pioneered cutting-edge fabric innovation from Crevalcore – a small town just 40 minutes from the Stadio Renato Dall’Ara. C.P. would have I Veltri playing in some of the most technologically advanced football gear we’ve ever seen. Fabrics that prevent sweat from even forming, training-wear that could survive in space, the warmest bench coats that have ever been stitched. Catch Thiago Motta doing sideline analysis through the digitised goggles of Miglia Mille, some Terminator, Google Glass type stuff. The people need it and, by people, we mean streetwear heads willing to drop a bag on a weird jacket. Molto bene.
