Fashion forward So how does the cult £360 Acne football shirt feel on the pitch?
It may be nearly the end of the Premier League season but fashion has other plans: this month the Swedish luxury fashion label Acne Studios launched a £360 mock replica football shirt. Even though it makes Nike’s £124 England tops seem like a bargain, it is close to sold out.
Acne calls it an “appliqued logoprint striped mesh T-shirt”, but to all intents and purposes it is a football shirt. The name of the label is where a sponsor would be, there’s a little white and navy striped crest that’s not dissimilar to that of the serial Swedish champions Malmö and it comes in a pastel hue, which is apt given that Acne’s creative director, Jonny Johansson, has been credited as the designer who popularised “millennial pink”.
This is the latest attempt by a catwalk brand to ape the polyester stylings of 1980s or 90s football. Others have come from Balenciaga’s Soccer Series in January (a 90s-looking baggy top, £1,050 ) and a similarly priced 2022 collaboration between Gucci and the streetwear brand Palace.
“Designers like Martine Rose have been doing it for years but it’s really caught on with some of the big luxury brands,” says Daniel-Yaw Miller, an expert at the industry site the Business of Fashion. “[Sport] helps them be relatable and show they’re aware of things outside of the fashion industry.”
But would playing in a top that costs more than some season tickets help transform my game from park plodder to stylish playmaker? Football, like fashion, loves a trier. And that’s very much my vibe: if you want someone to run around looking busy and give you the ball straight back, then I’m your man. My football fashion sense is similarly lacking in flair, more Keir Starmer at five-a-side than Jack Grealish for Gucci.
It’s a little snug as I make my way to the pitch for my Friday night game but I’m less self-conscious than I feared, possibly because it just looks like a football shirt but also because I can’t see the giant ACNE STUDIOS detail stitched on the back where a player’s name would normally be.
As I warm up I think the shirt does look pretty sharp – though I wouldn’t say it made my first touch any less clumsy. It also generally gets good reviews from my teammates. Although I will be self-conscious later when asked by someone else at a local pub: “What [expletive] team is that?” When I post the price on our football WhatsApp group, responses include: “I’m sure some wally would buy it” and “I’m pretty sure even [the Chelsea co-owner] Todd Boehly would think it’s expensive”.
Until a few years ago, with the boom in vintage shirt dealers such as Classic Football Shirts, replica tops were rarely considered cool, even among fans. But now they are being seen at catwalk shows.
“I think it’s definitely connected [to the boom in vintage kits],” says Miller. “Designers like to mine archives and look for historic and cultural references in their collections to show how sophisticated and culturally aware they are.”
The clubs themselves are also increasingly pairing up with labels. Those have included Juventus’s collaboration with Palace and Arsenal’s tie-up with the UK streetwear label Maharishi.
Miller also points to Paris SaintGermain’s embrace of fashion collaborations – an opportunity for both parties to cash in. The French club, which opened a London boutique last autumn, is the only football team to have kits made by Nike’s Air Jordan label. It has also teamed up with Dior and the Los Angeles brand Born x Raised.
But is there really a market for a £360 football shirt? “There is,” says Miller, “because this sport/fashion moment has exploded into the mainstream. You walk around in London or you go to fashion week and you see people who may not have any idea about what the badge on their luxury-brand football jersey says or means but they’re wearing it as a fashion item.”
All of which helps explain why luxury brands are so keen to get in on this lucrative game. But I won’t be wearing it again. Although the shirt features a quite beautiful stitched motif of the label’s brutalist Jan Bočan-designed HQ in Stockholm and is reminiscent of Palermo’s famous pink home jersey and Arsenal’s 2022-23 cult third kit, or Inter Miami’s light-pink home shirt – named one of Vogue’s 15 fashion items that defined 2023 – I soon realise one major flaw of wearing a sold-out luxury fashion number to play eight-a-side. Back at the pitch, our organiser Stu sorts the team out. He’s put me on bibs.
Would playing in a top that costs more than some season tickets help transform my game? Football loves a trier