Little Black Book: The Intersection of Fashion, Pop Culture, and Football Shirts

Next season, eleven Premier League clubs will have a new principal shirt sponsor, if they can find one.

As the front-of-shirt advertising rules come into play, and betting companies shift from prominent places on clubs’ shirts to hidden, international partnerships, it’s a major shift, and perhaps an opportunity for teams and brands to start doing things a little differently.

The cultural landscape around football kits has evolved massively in the last few years, with fans and teams leaning into emotionally resonant storytelling, both with their kit launches but also their kit designs. It’s time sponsorship brands pick up a trick or two about being culturally fluent with fanbases, too.

As a self-professed football shirt collector, the cult of the third kit runs deep. Whether it’s just an opportunity to flex the nicheness of your fanship, indulge in what feels like a bespoke rarity, or perhaps its design features something new and exciting, it’s usually the third shirt that fans await with a level of expectation, awaiting an offering from their club beyond the standard club kit colours. Increasingly, clubs are weaving insightful design narratives and collaborations into this kit, opening up a world of club self-expression and storytelling. If you’d told a fan in the ’80s, when third kits became ‘a thing’, that Tottenham would be selling a shirt described as the colour ‘space vomit’, you’d be told where to go.

Clubs embracing storytelling in their shirt design have been a lovely development in the industry. When Whitby Town released their gothic-inspired away kit this season, incorporating Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Whitby Abbey into the design, it placed Whitby Town on the literary map whilst also embracing its heritage in an unexpected, disruptive way within the football context.

It’s not often you hear discussions of the seminal work of Gothic fiction in the stands of a seventh-tier English football match.

Tottenham released their third kit featuring the seven trees of Seven Sisters, harking back to its local history. Burton Albion have created a River Trent-inspired away kit with blue ripples, whilst Everton have done the same with the Mersey inspiring their third. Countless clubs across Europe seem to be incorporating local legends and narratives into their designs, and with the heritage and local history of a club at the very heart of the football fan’s affinity for a team, proudly wearing that on your sleeve is a lovely development within the sport.

The evolution of the third kit’s role for clubs mirrors the intersection of football and fashion that the sport now finds itself in. No longer just associated with fans and blokes on their Brits abroad holidays in Magaluf, the football shirt is now a coveted piece in many a wardrobe, with fans jumping to secure the latest club collab, usually photographed by an acclaimed fashion photographer. When Venezia joined forces with Kappa in 2021, they probably hoped, but could not have possibly expected, the tidal wave of interest in their new fashionable shirts, unrestrained from previous Nike kit templates, and photographed beautifully by Chris Kontos. Meanwhile, Real Madrid’s menswear collection with Y-3, the designer Yohki Yamamoto, and shot by renowned director Gabriel Moses, completely reinvents the idea of what a kit and a kit launch should look like.

Of course, kits are no strangers to the world of entertainment. From the Gallaghers’ commitment to Manchester City through the ’90s, to the Spice Girls’ celebratory photography in their club colours, but the explosion of the last few years has seen rappers wearing local shirts on world tours, to Dua Lipa sparking a worldwide trend of (fake) celebrity shirt comps. Artists from Ed Sheeran to Elton John even part-own prominent clubs, incorporating their careers into their shirt designs, whilst the fairytale of Wrexham’s rise has played out like a Hollywood drama on actual television. Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, with its roots as a hip-hop label, now reps players like Vinicius Jr, Martinelli and De Bruyne. Football has gone from ‘the working man’s game’ and beloved sport of the nation, to a conduit for entertainment brands and figures to position themselves in the universal language of sport.

It’s never been so important for brands to stand out from the crowd, breaking away from convention and the same generic content brands all seem to create on their media days. As football and its fashion get cooler and more culturally relevant, so do the brands that play in the football space. There is plenty about specific, heritage-based storytelling that a sponsor could learn from, activating their partnership in ways beyond a logo placed next to a club badge. Whether that’s leaning more into fan ship, local culture, or just creating something bespoke and genuinely emotionally resonant for fans to see themselves in.

But as teams push themselves into the entertainment space with their wacky kits, other clubs are pushing back at the mass consumerism of it all. Not all clubs can afford three, or sometimes even four, spanking new, designed-up kits each season, especially when often restricted to the template their manufacturer offers. Others have quoted the environmental concern of mass fast-fashion and the need to continuously produce and sell shirts to fans every season, when, for decades, designs would often stay the same over a two-year period. Brentford recently committed to keeping its home kit the same for two-year cycles, becoming an outlier in the Premier League with its focus on fans’ finances and the environmental impact of continuous production and disposal of shirts.

Despite environmental concerns, it seems the intersectionality of fashion, football, entertainment, and heritage is still breaking new ground. Fans await each club kit launch with a new level of expectation and fascination, players are treated increasingly like photography and entertainment stars rather than just footballers in their own clubs, and the inspiration and opportunity for a jazzy third kit sees no boundaries. It’s time brands got with the times and used their sponsorship in a similar way. Regardless, if Whitby Town can incorporate Dracula into their kits, I can’t wait to see which West Yorkshire club brings out a Wuthering Heights-inspired shirt. Trust me, I’ll be buying.

Eve De Haan is a creative at Dark Horses. You can read the full article here.