Culture FC: How the football kit moved from the terraces to the streets and runway

Sports culture has been impacting wider culture and vice versa more than ever before as athletes show they’re more than an athlete, while music, screen and fashion stars and brands work with them and are influenced by sport.

Over a series of articles and essays I’ll be exploring this growing influence and exchange in depth to highlight the great, why this melting pot has come about and where things might be going. There’s the inevitable brand pile on as they look to take advantage so we’ll also look at those doing things the right way and those only in it for the short term cultural and commercial gain.

Today I wanted to kick things off with a look at football kits and the levels of creativity and cultural influence that is helping kits go beyond badges of honour to fashion staples, how the kit launch is being used as a chance to show up in culture and why staying true to a club or city is crucial to kit marketing.

As a football fan every summer thoughts turn to hope and improvement, new players coming in and out and also one of my favourite things each summer with the new kit reveal and first sighting of it during pre-season.

As a kid I was fortunate that my parents always got me and my brother the latest QPR kits home and away more or less the day they were released each season and we’d have them on constantly at home, down the rec, at the supermarket and some far-flung UK outpost pre-season game.

I used to cut out my favourite kits from an array of football magazines. A classic Italy kit by Diadora, Kappa’s mid to late 90s Juventus and Barcelona numbers. I loved when football shirts appeared in music videos or by my favourite artists. The Gallagher brother’s attitude shown in their Manchester City kits, or the England third kit from Italia 90 forever known as the New Order shirt after the ‘World In Motion’ video.

In recent years I find myself back to being that excited 10 year old waiting for the new QPR kits to drop each season but also looking out for new kit releases in general on a variety of places like Soccerbile and Mundial. News around kit culture from leaks to who is making them is treated with the same excitement as transfer gossip as a world grows around kit culture.

You’ve got people appreciating the look and design of the kits even if it’s a team you don’t support. You’ve got people wanting to show their deep knowledge and taste by wearing a rare shirt or cult team. You’ve got people getting into the weeds of who is designing the kit. You’ve got people who may not have deep knowledge of the team but just like the way it looks.

The football shirt is a way for fans to express their support for the team on the pitch in the stands and off it, but now the appeal has broadened. They’re also badges of honour to signal your tastes, knowledge or style.

The whole football fashion moment has played a part but also the general growth of the sport as a wider range of people take interest in it, all expressing different levels of fandom compared to the more tribal traditional season ticket holder or match goer.

There are different layers to football fashion as it goes further back than any recent trend. You go back to late 1970’s and early 80s when the football casual subculture existed through to the more recent decade of the adidas Spezial range, influenced by the terraces and has just launched Spezial FC.

These are way more authentic to the culture than blokecore. When it comes to the latter, like any niche or cultural moment related to fashion, there will always be some people quickly dipping in and out until the next thing catches their eye or TikTok tells them what’s hot. The football shirt is having its Nirvana and Ramones t-shirt moment where a certain type of fashion conscious buyer wants to buy into something even if it means they don’t know all the ins and outs.

The Cultural Influence

Why are we seeing kits everywhere now?

Culture is having more influence on football where no longer is football, fashion, music and art kept separate as players, clubs and fans all become much more closely connected to culture by letting those influences in to create this melting pot of creativity.

Players themselves are now not afraid to express or show their cultural interests and influences as we see from the likes of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Chloe Kelly, Jackson Irvine, Rafael Leão and Trinity Rodman to name a few.

I’m old enough to remember Les Ferdinand and John Salako modelling for Topman and of course David Beckham’s sense of style brought in the big fashion brands but only recently have the luxury fashion brands really emphasised football. We don’t feel surprised when Burberry work with Ebere Eze or Phil Foden, Raheem Sterling and Trent Alexander-Arnold feature in Bottega Veneta campaigns or Jack Grealish and Leah Williamson become Gucci Ambassadors.

Football kits show up off the field in more cultural ways than ever before, similar to how basketball jerseys both current and Mitchell & Ness retro were seen in most Hip-Hop videos in the 90s and early noughties. It’s now common to see football shirts in videos by Central Cee, Dave, AJ Tracey, 21 Savage and Stormzy to name a few. An early moment here was the Dave and AJ Tracey track ‘Thiago Silva’, with both emcees wearing the PSG shirts and shot around Paris and in particular the Parc Des Princes.

Kit makers Nike and adidas have looked outside of the core football product function to create kits and apparel through their lifestyle & talent partners or even other sports. Think PSG and Jordan brand, Stella McCartney and Arsenal, Palace and Juventus. Last year adidas had Grace Wales Bonner designing the Jamaica jersey and launching it in her Paris Fashion Week show, while they had Nigo of BAPE design a Japan World Cup kit.

Streetwear has had an influence on how clubs treat kit roll-outs with clubs releasing multiple special editions, pre-match & leisurewear that all has a story behind it like Arsenal’s Carnival inspired pre-game shirt, that celebrates their Jamaican fan base. And just like streetwear created grails and a resale scene with players like Stock X and GOAT, we have something similar going on with kit resale as a clamour for nostalgia and the 90s helps retro kits become grail worthy items. The rarer or more storied the shirt the better. Retailers like Cult Kits and Classic Football Shirts are thriving with the latter recently taking on investment from The Chernin Group to the tune of $38.5 million.

Kit designs are like works of art and culture historian, kit expert and Lovers FC founder Neal Heard has written the book A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts as well as curated an exhibition of the same name. 

Inevitably the football shirt has now become a marketing tactic for brands who want a piece of the cultural relevance they offer. Even food and drink has got in on the act with local pizza spots and cafes all collabing with local designers or clothing brands to create their own football shirts. 

There are some good ones out there like the recent Jameson x Mitre x Percival kits and Pompeii brand with Kappa spring to mind, but we’re reaching the point where a football shirt has become a go to marketing tactic in a toolkit of brand goods like branded pens and umbrellas. We’ll start to see a clutter of branded kits with varying degrees of quality and authenticity to why they’re making them.

When it comes to marketing the kits by the actual football clubs themselves, we’ve come a long way since the days of the club catalogue photoshoots. 

The Ted Philipakos Impact

Football kit launch convention was grabbing a couple of players after training for some snaps in the new kit with poses ranging from the classic hands on hips to the points to badge pose. Ok, you still see those poses but now you'll also see shoots that have taken on a much more fashion aesthetic with new kit imagery more akin to a fashion brand lookbook than your back in the day club catalogue. 

It was a club that’s been bankrupt multiple times that ripped up the rulebook when it came to football kit marketing and has now influenced many a kit launch shoot. Venezia FC have changed how kits are designed and marketed. Esquire dubbed them the world’s most trendiest football team back in 2022. 

Waiting for the new kit releases from Venezia FC suddenly became a thing, thanks to brand director Ted Philipakos, who worked closely with revered Munich design studio Bureau Borsche and Nowhere FC to rip-up the rule book. With each new kit release creating hype as if it were the latest Supreme or Nike sneakers drop through cut through designs with Kappa and lookbook styling not out of place in a GQ fashion shoot. 

After turning heads with his work at Venezia FC, Ted Philipakos moved onto Athens Kallithea with his brother and has rolled out a similar approach with Kappa once again creating some of the better kits out there. They really hit it out the park this summer with a launch film for the new season kits called ‘Hold Me Close to you’ which looks nothing like any kit launch you’ve seen before and is a short film that looks more like a romantic escapade around Athens then a kit launch.  

Does this ruffle feathers with the purists? Yes. But isn’t this more interesting than the paint numbers approach clubs tend to take? Absolutely. 

The Opportunity for Clubs

For the clubs, the kit is a big revenue stream each season outside of TV, sponsorship and ticket money so stands to reason the way they promote them has increasingly taken on more importance with social channels to fill and anticipation to fuel. 

How football clubs launch the kits offers a chance to tell a story of the club, the fabric of the club’s ethos, heritage and fan base. With clubs looking for more opportunities to expand their reach we’re seeing the creativity pushed and teams moving away from sports catalogue convention. 

Kappa and adidas are at different ends of the scale in terms of budgets and teams they work with but both have won the summer as far as I’m concerned with their approach to launching kits and telling either a story with substance.

While Nike have seemingly softened the importance of football to the brand based on recent effort and output, adidas have in the last few years reinforced their credentials as the brand on and off the terraces with the scale of the Samba and Gazelle success as well as continued credibility of the Spezial range led by Gary Aspden. 

On the pitch they’re also reinforcing their credentials as technical partners having released the best kits for the World Cup in 22 and Euros in 24 and some classics on the club front in recent years.

This summer the three stripes have reached another level with designs generating praise beyond a club's own fans. They’ve also hit it out the park with some great launch films that truly showcase the fabric of what makes the clubs heritage and fanbase special. High praise here for their launch films for Newcastle returning to the three stripes, Manchester United’s third with Barry Keoghan and Aston Villa with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler.

All feature elements that make up the club, the fan base or the city whether it’s who stars in it or the sound track, to the local symbols and signifiers featured. 

Now adidas have the budget others other brands don’t have with clubs that have global reach, but that doesn’t mean creativity can’t be managed on a smaller budget and Kappa have absolutely led the way in this light. 

Maybe it’s the Ted Philipakos impact rubbing off on the brand but Kappa have carved out a lane of their own with fashionable aesthetics and localised storytelling in their kit launches for their roster. 

I already mentioned the Athens Kallithea short film, while another smaller team punching beyond their weight with creative output in the Kappa roster is Red Star FC in Paris. Ex-pro player David Bellion is one of the few Creative Director’s in the sport and for this season’s kit launch they celebrated the connection between the team and the local community in Saint-Ouen, the area that surrounds their home of the Stade Bauer by featuring the people and places that made up the local arrondissement.

Genoa have always had a classic kit that keeps it simple to shine and Kappa have honoured that with this season's design and launch campaign. Titled “Beauty of Genoa”, it focuses on the Portofino neighbourhood and celebrates the everyday life of the people in the beautiful Italian Riviera location. 

Other notables include the launches by Macron for Crystal Palace, Slovakia & FC Basel with a late contender from Puma for Manchester City’s Oasis Definitely Maybe inspired third kit. There’s some nice videos for PSG and Liverpool kits from Nike but feel they could have pushed them further beyond studio shoots. Worth a watch is the effort from Barcelona which is more on the playful side and features a bunch of legends and a look into the Catalan city. 

Staying Authentic

When it comes to launching football kits, the game has changed and while purists may roll their eyes at fashion lookbooks and short films, there’s no doubt they have contributed to the ever growing and evolving melting pot of football, creativity and culture. While also taking inspiration from culture and the creative talent adjacent to football.  

With so many kits, pre-game and leisurewear released each season by clubs we can’t expect masterpieces every time. While some clubs are setting such high bars that it is going to be a challenge to find a new angle to launch a product that doesn’t change too much from one year to the next. 

I’m here for the creativity though and we should embrace the clubs and suppliers that want to do something different and break with convention. By all means lean on the fashion lookbook aesthetics but not for the sake of it. If everyone starts following the fashion lookbook template then we fall back into convention again. So where else can you go? It doesn’t have to start and end with some visuals and a film. Back in 2022 the agency I worked for TBWA launched the adidas World Cup kits via ‘leaking’ the kits in cultural moments and spaces relevant to that nation rather than a traditional film and press release. 

Kit launches are a chance to make revenue from fans and reach new ones, but they’re also an important chance to communicate all the great and good of your club and what it means to the people and places that make it.  

It's really important for anyone working on these launches to understand the cultural fabric that makes up a club, the city or town they’re in. Celebrate the importance of the fans who go to games, but also those in the community around the club that are the heartbeat of an area when a game isn’t on. Show us the intangibles and essence of the club, the city, the people and the community that makes the club stand out against the next like the earlier mentioned Red Star FC. I really like how the newly formed Brooklyn FC launched their kit by making what is essentially a love letter to the borough or the sense of place you get from the St.Louis City Confluence kit launch.

This has to be the starting point for any great kit launch in my book to keep it authentic and not just find a loosely connected reason to shoot in a more lifestyle setting with a fashion photographer. While football opens itself up to more creativity for the better, finding the balance between substance and throw-away algorithm chasing content will be the road test for future kit launches and creative output for clubs. I’m excited to see where this goes.