Where football meets fashion

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Where football meets fashion

Models pose in a range of Art of Football products.  [ART OF FOOTBALL]

Models pose in a range of Art of Football products. [ART OF FOOTBALL]

 
Football fans live and breathe the beautiful game. Perhaps more than any other sport, football fosters such a level of support that it often overtakes the identity of its biggest fans. You’re an Everton fan first, for example, and a husband, father and office worker second.
 
But while baseball fans can wear a cap with pretty much any outfit and American football fans have entire clothing ranges dedicated to their teams, football fans don’t have a particularly easy way to show their team colors.
 
Football fashion is a complicated concept. While football shirts and training kits exist, they are often not an option outside of an actual match day, a trip to the gym or the closet of a 10-year-old child. Football shirts are, fundamentally, sportswear and therefore often an inappropriate outfit choice for day-to-day life.
 
Twenty to thirty years ago, football fashion meant brands like Stone Island, Ellesse, Adidas, Fila and Lyle and Scott. These brands were all part of the football casual culture, worn by hooligans and the rougher supporters, essentially becoming symbols of a gang culture rather than the outfit of choice for a football-loving family man.
 
Those brands have slowly rehabilitated their image over the years, but it remains the case that if a fan wants to show off their love of football or of a specific team, their options have been fairly limited.
 
British brand Art of Football and Korean brand Over the Pitch are two companies looking to tackle that issue with their own attempts to reimagine football fashion for everyday life.
 
 
Art of Football
 
British apparel brand Art of Football is focused on fun.  
 
Started by two brothers with a heat press machine installed in the back of a burger van, Art of Football has always focused on capturing the biggest and most memorable moments in football and recreating them as fun, accessible clothing designs.
 
A football shirt and bucket hat designed in collaboration with Budweiser.  [ART OF FOOTBALL]

A football shirt and bucket hat designed in collaboration with Budweiser. [ART OF FOOTBALL]

 
“As lifelong Nottingham Forest fans,” Art of Football’s Head of Brand Kelvyn Quagraine told the Korea JoongAng Daily, “[the founders] realized they were passionate about capturing the moments that make people fall in love with football.
 
“Nine years later, the brand has grown to become one of the fastest growing merchandise and lifestyle brands in football. The ambition is to become the most creative sportswear and lifestyle brand in sport.”
 
A quick look at the Art of Football website shows a series of designs inspired by football culture, from the easily understandable, like illustrations of nine historic Arsenal shirts arranged in a grid on a t-shirt, to the more fan-specific, like an illustration of the moment Steven Gerrard powered a shot past Shaka Hislop in the dying minutes of the 2006 FA Cup final.
 
An illustration captures the moment Steven Gerrard beats Shaka Hislop in the 2006 FA Cup final.  [ART OF FOOTBALL]

An illustration captures the moment Steven Gerrard beats Shaka Hislop in the 2006 FA Cup final. [ART OF FOOTBALL]

 
“I would say at the moment we are establishing ourselves as more of a lifestyle brand,” Quagraine said. “We believe that we can turn football culture into a lifestyle that fans can wear beyond going to watch their teams play.  
 
“As artists, we always want to be known as a brand that creatively leads the crowd, with a focus on developing a community through our work that places football fans and fan culture at the heart of what we do.
 
“Our process is really fluid. We usually see a moment that has happened within football, brainstorm a creative way of showcasing it as a reactive design, and then we get creative.”
 
While Art of Football may have started with tongue-in-cheek designs and meme-able moments, the success of the brand has seen some different products start to emerge.  
 
The website also acts as a reselling sight for retro football kits and the designs are also available as prints, but the real star of the show is the reworked range, where Art of Football designers take old football scarves and shirts, cut them up and then sew them into entirely new products.  
 
Art of Football’s reworked range takes retro football scarves and sews them into new clothing garments.  [ART OF FOOTBALL]

Art of Football’s reworked range takes retro football scarves and sews them into new clothing garments. [ART OF FOOTBALL]

 
The most popular items in the range are the reworked sweaters, with an old football scarf sewn into the middle of the stomach of the garment, but the company has also experimented with hats made from old football shirts and padded vests made from scarves.
 
Art of Football has also started to slowly expand outside of football, with sections on their website dedicated to Art of Basketball, Art of Boxing, Art of Cricket, Art of Cycling, Art of Rugby and Art of Tennis.
 
“Our long-term vision is to become the most creative team in sport for the next 100 years,” Quagraine said. “Delivering collections and designs that champion creativity and speaks to football fan culture both on and off the pitch. There are multiple different ways we can express that creativity through our product and we are really excited.
 
“We are really excited about the growth of the women's game, and feel there is so much room to illustrate the new history being made within the sport every year. We have some exciting ideas for the tournament that we cannot wait to launch”
 
The brand has already seen some success when it comes to women’s football — an Ikea-inspired graphic highlighting Alessia Russo’s backheel goal at the 2022 Women’s Euros is one of their most popular designs of all time, according to Quagraine.
 
Manchester United striker Alessia Russo poses in a T-shirt commemorating her backheel goal at the 2022 Euros.  [ART OF FOOTBALL]

Manchester United striker Alessia Russo poses in a T-shirt commemorating her backheel goal at the 2022 Euros. [ART OF FOOTBALL]

 
Like many companies in football, Art of Football are also increasingly targeting the Korean brand. The company ships to Korea and offers sales in Korean won, with some Son Heung-min designs available on the website.
 
“We are really excited to see more players from Korea doing the nation proud in Europe's most prominent leagues,” Quagraine said. “We are particularly inspired about the spirit and richness of Korea's support of their players abroad. We're excited about the prospect of creating designs that could speak to this.”
 
 
Over the Pitch
 
Korean brand Over the Pitch takes a different approach. While Art of Football focuses on fun, Over the Pitch is more fashion forward. Art of Football aims to bring football into fashion, while Over the Pitch brings fashion to football, collaborating with major brands like MCM, Sony and Budweiser.
 
Over the Pitch was named both for the idea that football as a culture can represent much more than just what happens on the pitch and founder and CEO Choi Ho-keun’s love for the Nick Hornby book “Fever Pitch.” The brand was recently bought by streetwear brand Kasina in a deal reportedly valued at 3.6 billion won ($2.8 million).
 
Football shirts designed in collaboration with Budweiser.  [OVER THE PITCH]

Football shirts designed in collaboration with Budweiser. [OVER THE PITCH]

 
Like Art of Football, Over the Pitch also acts as a reseller for vintage football shirts. In fact, it was collecting football shirts that first inspired Choi to start the brand.
 
“I have been collecting football shirts since I was really young,” Choi told the Korea JoongAng Daily, “which made me get into collection, and I’ve gathered various things since.
 
“I created the brand hoping that I could share my lifestyle of collecting and wearing football jerseys with a lot of people.”
 
Despite starting with a football shirt obsession, Over the Pitch has shifted far more toward fashion with its own designs.
 
“It is a fashion brand,” Choi said. “We do not make apparel with our focus on the performance of the apparel in mind in the first place.
 
“We base our brand on collection and classical culture. It is the reason why, although inconvenient, we look to imitate the culture that existed at some point in the past rather than focusing on what modern technology can do.
 
“I think that we are a brand inspired by sports rather than a sports-apparel brand.”
 
Over the Pitch’s Adidas UB DNA 2002 WC collection shirt commemorates Korea’s success at the 2002 World Cup.  [OVER THE PITCH]

Over the Pitch’s Adidas UB DNA 2002 WC collection shirt commemorates Korea’s success at the 2002 World Cup. [OVER THE PITCH]

 
One major difference between Art of Football and Over the Pitch is the focus on football shirts. As a Korean brand, Over the Pitch doesn’t have to worry about any of the historic stigma that comes with wearing a football shirt outside of the football context.
 
With Korean fans free to wear football shirts as regular items of clothing, even to the office in some cases, Over the Pitch has dedicated a large part of its designs to reimaging football shirts through brand collaborations or to bring back specific moments in football history.  
 
“We always include jerseys because they are our identity,” Choi said. “We also consider other items more comfortable than jerseys that can be used to represent football in daily lives.
 
“Modern jerseys are much more comfortable and lighter, but they are not fit for fashion. That is why we focus on the fashion rather than the performance and functionality of the jerseys by making the jerseys like those old thick ones in the past or using less soft materials.”
 
Collaborations are at the center of a lot of Over the Pitch’s designs. The Adidas UB DNA 2002 WC collection, for example, is a retro-looking football shirt that celebrates Korea’s success at the 2022 World Cup designed in partnership with Adidas.
 
“The collaborative project with the KFA last June is the most memorable for me,” Choi said. “It was a project to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which is like reliving dream and a precious memory for every Korean.”
 
The MCM, Budweiser and Sony collections also include football shirts designed for those brands, while the Puma partnership features artwork from rapper J Tong and tattoo artist Bong Chill Park. Each range often includes other items, like sweatshirts, scarves, hoodies and special brand items like Sony headphones or Adidas sneakers.
 
The MCM range produced in partnership with Germany luxury fashion brand MCM.  [OVER THE PITCH]

The MCM range produced in partnership with Germany luxury fashion brand MCM. [OVER THE PITCH]

 
“We had collaborated with non-football related brands before the deals with Budweiser and MCM, and that is the direction we are seeking,” Choi said. “Whilst keeping the identity of football, we want to go beyond football like the brand name ‘Over the Pitch’ suggests and incorporate various other cultures.”
 
Like Art of Football, Over the Pitch has also started to slowly spread into other sports. Last year the brand was selected to produce a collection to mark the 40th anniversary of the Korea Baseball Organization.
 
“I like football the most,” Choi said, “but I absolutely love other fields besides football. There are so many things to love and respect in this world such as car, music, movie, art and alcohol.
 
“I think I can spread the culture of football itself and what we do to a bigger audience to grow our market by combining football and other cultures.”
 
Korean national team manager Jurgen Klinsmann poses in a Korean national team scarf designed by Over the Pitch.  [YONHAP]

Korean national team manager Jurgen Klinsmann poses in a Korean national team scarf designed by Over the Pitch. [YONHAP]


BY JIM BULLEY [jim.bulley@joongang.co.kr]
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