Football and fashion have not always been easy bedfellows.
It’s not long ago that players were singled out for anything approaching an ostentatious dress sense. “It changed a lot over the years,” former Manchester City and Queens Park Rangers defender Nedum Onuoha tells The Athletic. “At the start of my career, in the early 2000s, there was almost a bully culture. If you came in wearing something people didn’t like, they’d literally cut your clothes up, or hang your shoes somewhere you couldn’t get to them.”
“You were always being judged, so you were just trying to blend in. So as a consequence you’d just get tonnes of people wearing sportswear, just something very basic. A Nike tracksuit: that’s the camouflage. You still see that with some players.”
In the ultra-masculine world of football, an interest in fashion was anathema. Turn up in “rascal clobber” and you were the talk of the dressing room. Thinking about what you wore meant you weren’t thinking about the game, and perhaps more dangerously, also held associations with vanity and effeminacy.
It’s a school of thought that goes back some way. Brian Clough once claimed that he didn’t sign Gary McAllister because he arrived for contract negotiations at Forest wearing cowboy boots, conveniently ignoring that McAllister had always preferred to sign for Leeds. Sir Alex Ferguson said he knew Manchester United would overcome Liverpool in the 1996 FA Cup final as soon as his opponents trod the Wembley turf in their pre-match white suits.
“I said to (assistant) Brian Kidd, ‘1-0’. Because of that,” Ferguson has said. “It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Blue shirt, red and white tie and white suit. And a blue flower. Who designed that? They say it was Armani. I bet his sales went down.”
Liverpool players in their white suits before the 1996 FA Cup final (Photo: Eddie Barford/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Roy Keane told Ruud van Nistelrooy to ditch the hairband because he was “in the Premier League now”. Charles N’Zogbia’s Aston Villa team-mates were appalled at his flower-patterned Gucci suits. David Beckham’s sarong was front-page news.
Eventually, the conformist mentality led to players abandoning any attempt at fashion whatsoever. “Then there came a point where people would just wear anything, like they’d just rolled out of bed in the morning,” says Onuoha. “You might have a pair of tracksuit trousers on, some jumper and shoes that don’t match. People were making a conscious effort to make no effort.”
But now, football — and the world — is changing. The explosion of social media means a player’s image is more important than ever. “Social media means everyone has their own brand,” says Onuoha. “You’re seen a lot more than you were when I started. Now it’s more normal to share pictures of yourself. Back then, we were still having arguments about the merits of selfies as a concept.
“When the idea of a ‘personal brand’ came in, it flipped. That’s when you’d see people coming in in the Balenciaga Race Runner shoes and stuff like that.”
Training grounds suddenly became awash with labels and style statements. The conformist instinct remains: it’s merely that standing out became the new fitting in.
“There was a young player at Man City, the same age as me,” says Onuoha. “He was known as ‘Mr Louis Vuitton’ because he had a trunk full of 50, 60 pairs of Louis Vuitton shoes. It must have cost him thousands.
“That’s one of the perils of it. Some of the people who run out of money as they progress through the game, it’s probably because they’re spending a lot on fashion, cars, etc. But all the while, someone in fashion might say they’re not the best dressed. Or it might not be the best car. It’s about perception, and what they believe they need to have to fit in.”
In that sort of culture, a more quotidian dress sense has become vulnerable to mockery. At Manchester City, Bernardo Silva is regularly the subject of jokes and taunts from team-mates. His crime? Dressing like a normal adult man.
“There was a guy I was with at QPR,” says Onuoha. “He’d been to university and his career had developed quite late. They used to bully him because they said he was ‘too normal’ — get your head around that! The clothes he’d wear would be too normal, the way he thought was too normal. The fact he’d wear the same trainers four or five days in a row — he never fit in because of it. I was thinking, ‘This is insane’.”
Although dressing-room culture retains those conformist elements, there’s no doubt that the worlds of football and fashion are beginning to converge. Players are more open to expressing themselves creatively, to pursuing interests outside of the game. Even this weekend, England international Kalvin Phillips made headlines for sporting footwear that can only be described as resembling disposable overshoes. “This would have been impossible a few years ago,” says Onuoha. “Now it’s a talking point.”
A select few are even beginning to step off the field and onto the catwalk. In 2020, Dominic Calvert-Lewin and Tom Davies made headlines attending New York Fashion Week. The likes of Beckham walked so Hector Bellerin could saunter down the Paris runway.
Everton’s Tom Davies and Dominic Calvert-Lewin (Photo: Tony McArdle/Everton FC via Getty Images)
But this is about more than the dressing room developing a dress sense. Recent years have seen an increasing number of collaborations between footballers and fashion brands. Marcus Rashford has worked with Burberry; Megan Rainoe became the face of Loewe; Memphis Depay partnered with Italian brand Valentino in collaboration with GAFFER. Most recently, The Athletic exclusively revealed that England’s Jack Grealish has agreed to a deal with luxury brand Gucci.
This is about football and fashion — but increasingly, it is also about business.
“There’s a new generation of athletes wanting to project themselves in a different way to the old guard,” says Jordan Wise, who co-founded GAFFER with his business partner Hamish Stephenson. “It was once alien for a player to wear something different, and yet now players all want to be different. They’re competing on the pitch and they’re competing off it too.”
In his work as a football agent, Wise was encountering players who were passionate about fashion and other creative pursuits but had no medium to express that. GAFFER aims to fill that gap, showcasing footballers as more than just athletes — as individuals with far broader cultural ties to the worlds of fashion, music and entertainment.
The influence of America is clear. “If you look at the US there’s obviously a wider spectrum of sports and consequently a wider scope of sporting heroes, who are all celebrated for their influence beyond the game — be that in fashion, philanthropy or music,” says GAFFER’s senior creative Tom Everest. “That American model has given athletes the ability to transcend the sport.”
“It’s a cultural thing,” adds Wise. “In the states, sports and entertainment are very much in one basket. And athletes who are perceived to be more than an athlete — whether that’s because of their entrepreneurial spirit, their philanthropy or whatever else — are championed as personalities and celebrated.”
In England, it’s not always the same. “The minute you’re no longer succeeding in sporting terms, or your momentum is disturbed, you’ll be under attack”, says Wise. “The press and pundits will attack you for a lack of focus.” Marcus Rashford has recently discovered that on-field struggles will see off-field activities scrutinised.
Despite that stigma, the confluence of football and fashion seemingly continues apace. “This morning, two of the girls in our office walked past Zara and in the window, there were two mannequins wearing football shirts, designed by Zara as a fashion piece,” says Wise.
“The fashion houses kicked off this cycle two or three years ago,” explains Everest. “Whatever starts in the runways will be on the streets 12 months later. They lead the way, the high street follows suit. What’s in Zara now is directly related to what we saw 18 months to two years ago, when Balenciaga interpreted its own football jersey in a fashion show. The wheels are in motion. These worlds are being collided.”
That trickle-down effect is visible across any high street. “You’ve got Hector Bellerin, Marcus Rashford, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Raheem Sterling, Memphis Depay, etc, working with Louis Vuitton, Bodega, Burberry,” says Everest. “There aren’t explicitly football-related campaigns — but when you have a footballer as a figurehead it inspires a kind of secondary layer that puts football right into the heart of the fashion aesthetic and the fashion conversation.
“Football has infiltrated ready-to-wear and streetwear too. For instance, Loewe did its collection with Megan Rapinoe, Stussy has just done a collaboration with PSG. Stussy for so long has been entrenched in skate and surf culture, and now it’s stepped into football with this collaboration.
“Now we’re seeing the influence of football filtering down even further into the high street with the likes of Zara. Primark is collaborating with the NBA — I would expect the same thing where clubs have more of a presence in high-street stores over the next few years too.”
Although the values of self-expression and creativity are purported to be the impetus for football’s new affinity to fashion, let’s be clear: there is a major commercial component too. That’s no great secret. Fashion is a way of fleshing out a footballer and turning them into something with more cultural (and thus commercial) traction.
“As an agent, you think, ‘OK, I have a footballer here. But how do I create a brand?’,” says Erkut Sogut, whose clients include Fenerbahce’s Mesut Ozil. “Fashion is a part of that brand. First, you have an athlete, then you create a brand, then you can license that brand.”
Ozil is an interesting case study. One of the complexities footballers face in working with fashion brands is that they’re often already tied to a major sportswear company via a boot deal. These are “boot deals” only in name — the likes of Adidas, Nike and Puma make far more revenue from streetwear and sneakers than football boots, and want to lock players down for those categories too.
Those restrictions are what led Bellerin to drop Puma. He now buys Mizunos independently as he believes them to be the best boot for him, and he benefits from commercial freedom.
Ozil made a similar decision. Having parted ways with Adidas after a seven-and-a-half-year commitment, he declined to enter a new boot deal and focused his efforts on developing the “M10 brand” instead.
Mesut Ozil celebrates a goal for Fenerbahce (Photo: Onur Coban/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Started in 2014, Sogut and Ozil exploited a grey area in the Adidas contract to begin producing M10 streetwear, mainly caps and t-shirts. They were influenced by the American model — the idea that every NBA player, for example, is almost a brand in their own right.
At an international tournament, they gifted M10 hats to the likes of Manuel Neuer, Jerome Boateng and Julian Draxler, who effectively provided free marketing via social media. Since parting ways with Adidas in 2020, they have begun licensing the brand and have struck deals with companies in Indonesia, Australia, Italy and Germany. Ozil has recently launched the M10 Concave — his own personalised football boot.
While a traditional boot deal brings guaranteed revenue, building your own brand potentially offers greater long-term rewards. For an athlete with an audience as substantial as Ozil’s — a combined 80 million across different platforms — the move makes a lot of sense. It also means that when a player signs for a new team, the club is effectively acquiring a brand rather than just an athlete. The image rights negotiations go to another level.
Not all footballers, of course, have Ozil’s platform or Bellerin’s opportunities for collaboration. For many, the security of a contract with a performance brand is too good to turn down. Jordan Wise believes, however, there is still wiggle room to be found.
“The commercial performance brands who have a boot deal with a player will always want to cover as many categories within that agreement as possible,” admits Wise. “If the player has a good agent, they’ll look to carve out as many of those categories that aren’t relevant to the performance brand as possible. For example, ‘formalwear’ is a category that could be left out, as a sports brand isn’t going to fight for that to always be included. That, therefore, creates space for another potential partnership in formalwear and clothing.
“Also, now a lot of these sports brands are collaborating very heavily with high-fashion brands. For example, Prada and Adidas, Gucci and Adidas, Off-White and Nike, Sacai and Nike.
“It’s definitely becoming a greyer area. In years gone by, if you did a deal with Adidas, you were locked in to them. But now because Adidas is blurring the lines of fashion, performance and sport, some of those high-fashion brands have been put into the same basket. So, indirectly you have the blessing of the brand to explore a conversation with them.”
Not everyone is convinced that football and fashion are, as yet, a perfect match. Ehsen Shah is the founder of sports marketing specialists B-Engaged, which counts Bellerin among its clients. “I’m probably going to give you an answer that no one else is going to give you,” warns Shah. “I think it’s still a long way off.”
His contention is that true credibility within the fashion world is reserved for a select few footballers: those who have the time and the will to genuinely pursue it. When Bellerin walked the catwalk for Louis Vuitton in 2019, then-artistic director Virgil Abloh said he recruited the Spaniard because his personality embodied his intentions for the collection — not because he was a footballer.
Bellerin, left, pictured at a London catwalk in 2018 when he was still at Arsenal (Photo; David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Oliver Spencer)
Fashion has longstanding links with film and cinema, but Shah believes there is still a residual snobbery when it comes to football. “Speaking to fashion brands they still don’t take footballers seriously,” he says. “Most footballers are seen as people who just go to Selfridges and buy the most expensive thing and think that’s fashion. And there’s an element of truth in that. There are very few who really get it.”
In some respects, football does face an uphill battle in the fashion world. For starters, visibility for a footballer is substantially lower than a big movie star: you’re one of 11 players on the field, 22 on the pitch, 25 in a squad. The work required off the field to stand out is considerable.
What’s more, the crossover between people who run labels and passionate football fans is relatively small. There are exceptions: 424 founder Guillermo Andrade is a big Arsenal supporter, which played a part in his decision to collaborate with the club. More often though, Shah suggests, fashion clients simply won’t know who most footballers are. Bellerin has actively found a place in that world through years of work. What other footballers have the passion and desire to follow suit? “Every single footballer wants to work with fashion brands,” says Shah. “But you have to ask, ‘Do you know fashion?’.”
The team at GAFFER see it differently. “With the brands we work with right now, football is the hottest currency,” says Everest. “The engagement that footballers generate dwarfs a lot of other industries and because footballers are now open, engaged and conscious of their image and their impact beyond the game, that’s only grown.
“Footballers are now able to bring a strong captive audience of people interested in a lifestyle beyond the lens of football. Brands see that cultural currency.”
Their belief is that while certain trailblazers are leading the way, it is having a wider impact. For Grealish to be endorsed by a luxury brand such as Gucci appears a significant stride forward. Even in that instance, however, there are some prepared to pour cold water on the deal. “They haven’t done it because they think Jack Grealish is premium,” says one industry source. “The reality is they need to sell at a completely different price point that they weren’t able to hit before. So they’re basically making sweatshirts for £120 that they’re hoping people loads of people will buy. That’s how the fashion world will look at it, but the football world will think it’s some big step for footballers.”
Perhaps the next few years will be telling. Jordan Wise believes the next generation of superstars will have a bigger cultural impact than ever before — in fashion, and beyond.
“The noteworthy stars of the new generation are just about to come into this new cycle,” he says. “Someone like Marcus Rashford was 20, 21 when he started to really amplify his profile. Hector’s profile grew very early because he clearly had very strong passions outside the game. Trent (Alexander-Arnold) is another who has been keen to promote himself and engage accordingly.
“But we’re nine months away from a World Cup in Qatar, and then after that, we’re working towards what, in my opinion, will be the biggest World Cup for a long time, in America. We’ve spoken a lot about how US culture has fused those worlds of sports, fashion, music and entertainment, and you will see all those worlds colliding more so than ever.
“So, we’re about to go on a cycle where the Bukayo Sakas, the Emile Smith Rowes, the Jude Bellinghams are going to explode over the next two years. It’s a passing-of-the-torch moment. This generation is very humble — they don’t want to project this larger-than-life lifestyle, so it’s a slightly slower burn to see their true personalities come out. But as they get more comfortable on the pitch, they’ll get more comfortable off it.
“When we talk about commercial deals and striking partnerships, the likes of Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland are about to take over the scene in a way that hasn’t been seen before. These guys are huge on social media, and so much of the demographic is Gen-Z. That generation is fully engaged with these athletes across every platform and now every part of life, too. These players have an audience these fashion brands want. They are the consumers of the future.”
(Top photo: Getty Images/Design: Sam Richardson)
Source: theathletic.com