Trends in Football Shirts Fashion Over the Years

Football shirts have a lot of meaning to the game than you actually thought. Since each team has specific designs for their apparel, you can clearly see the history and visual strength of their spirit just by looking at these kits. If you are a solid fan of the sport and you love to wear their apparel, then it’s a good thing you are here. By reading this article, you will be able to learn more about the history of this football fashion over the years, and you will get a clearer understanding of the trends that came along with it.

Why is Football Fashion Suddenly a Thing?

Each team comes from a different country, which means they represent themselves by playing on the field. Aside from the fact that they need to come up with amazing team plays, they also need to make sure that their visual representations directly relate to their specific origins.

By coming up with unique design elements that blend within FIFA’s standards, various companies such as Nike, Puma, and Adidas provide amazing apparels to sponsor these teams. As the years progressed, many of them started to represent more and more designs and ideas, promoting football fashion in the most efficient way by aligning it perfectly with their jobs.

The Two Most Popular Trends for Jerseys

There have always been two iconic trends whenever manufacturers produce football jerseys or shirts. First is their use of a referencing technique by copying a specific city’s architecture, and the second one is the use of geometric lines to create a striking flow on their designs. To understand them better, let’s break them down into specifics.

The architectural reference design is one of the most noticeable hits when it comes to football shirts. Since football teams come from different countries (as mentioned before in this article), manufacturers consider their “roots” for the design. For example, in Marseille’s case, the architectural beauty of Cité Radieuse is clearly imprinted on their jersey’s overall look. Another excellent design can be found within Barça’s jersey — a pink shirt discreetly embedded with the Avinguda Diagonal structure all over it.

Relating a specific city’s artistry with football kits have always been the classic move of sports manufacturers. Most of their samples are seen in the past, such as Nike’s jerseys using the architectural elements of famous cities like Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Madrid, and London. That is why if you are going to observe jerseys back then, almost all of them have this one identical format.

The next popular trend among football shirts today is the peculiar geometrical designs. We are not talking about weird shapes or anything like those here, but about the amazing placements of geometric lines within artistic color blends. This provides a more modern and uniform look to the jersey itself. The best example relating to this kind of design is Inter Milan’s jersey — blending dark blue and black colors by using zig-zagged lines in order to promote tribal pop art.

Local References

Another amazing trend well-executed by Puma and Manchester City is the use of local references to create a story for their jerseys. In this example, we can see their usage of black and yellow stripes to promote the famous nightclub Hacienda. The design may seem simple, but it definitely made a huge impact on their style.

The Main Factors that Contributed to Their Popularity

● Fast Fashion — There has always been an increasing demand for football kits since fans also buy them to support their home teams. Of course, aside from the tremendous amount of support, people loved to use them as day-to-day outfits too. This is why manufacturers consider fast fashion as one of their key investments.

● Political Messaging — Most modern-day kits promote political viewpoints as a sign of strength against unfair and oppressive governments. Taking part in socio-political positions has always been a tradition for football clubs, which means this has been a thing for a long time.

● Celebrating Iconic Moments — A lot of modern football shirts promote the iconic moments of a certain team by remaking their past designs. This is to show their support and celebration of that particular event, reminding the team of the incredible journey they have faced since then.

Football shirts have always made a mark in the fashion industry. Although they have almost the same format every time, you can still see the amazing works of artists and developers when it comes to the details.

These kits are one of the most influential pieces of fashion ever produced, especially since they usually include an iconic landmark to promote a specific team and their history. Of course, the real competition when it comes to these things fall within their creative designs, which would then result in the rise or fall of their popularity.

The above article has been contributed by the Dublin GAA Jersey Company.