The Euros may be over, but fashion’s football fever lives on

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The Euros might be over, but don’t pack away your jerseys just yet.

The sportswear staple has been getting the fashion treatment in recent months, which is partly down to the hype fuelled by this year’s tournament. Ahead of the final, searches for “England jerseys” were up 623 per cent (spiking right after England beat Switzerland in the quarter-final), per Google Trends. On the day of the final, searches were almost double that of the 6 July game — despite England’s loss. But the trend goes deeper than Euros-mania.

Off the pitch, football jerseys have been getting major play not just from fans of the sport, but from the fashion set too. It-girls Dua Lipa, Hailey Bieber and, most recently, Bella Hadid, have stepped out in jerseys over recent weeks. At London’s Capital Summertime Ball, Sabrina Carpenter threw on an England jersey over her Versace mini dress. On TikTok, consumers are offering up styling tips for football garb, from slip skirts and ballet flats (leaning into the ‘blokette’ micro-trend that took hold late last year) to jerseys as dresses.

Brands are going in. Places+Faces just released a football jersey collab with Gymshark, and VFiles announced a collaboration with English football team Barnsley FC on its kits (also with Puma). KidSuper’s Colm Dillane worked with Barnsley on last season’s collab. Conner Ives and Batsheva are among the independent designers selling reworked jerseys. Acne Studios’s pink $500 jersey went viral last year, and sold out at launch in April 2024. And the likes of Wales Bonner and Martine Rose regularly tap the aesthetic in their own designs, while collaborating with bigger players Adidas and Nike, respectively.

Depop saw a significant spike in searches for “football shirts” ahead of the 2024 Euros, with a 294 per cent increase from May to June, according to the company. Agus Panzoni, Depop’s trends spokesperson, puts this down to a mix of Euros fervour, festival season (where football shirts have become a surprise favourite over the last year, she says) and the ongoing influence of ‘blokecore’. The Palace x Umbro collection saw a whopping 3,929 per cent uptick in searches on Depop following the March 2024 announcement of their sixth drop, according to the site.

Women are key players. Sixty-seven per cent of women who are sports fans have purchased sporting merchandise — despite only 49 per cent having ever purchased a ticket to a live sports event, per Klarna and fan intelligence company Sports Innovation Lab’s Rep Her report, which surveyed 1,000 sports fans and sought to quantify the untapped demand for women’s sports merch. “[This] shows the appetite for this new fashion-focused entry to fandom culture,” says Emily Rhodes, creative foresight analyst at strategic consultancy The Future Laboratory.

The trend has longevity, experts agree, thanks to its cultural significance, versatility and brand collaboration opportunities. Plus, in the sporting world, there are endless tentpole events to drive hype, Panzoni says — particularly as women’s football continues to gain momentum.

Reworking, redistributing

Brands are reworking football jerseys, in terms of both the physical garments and the ideas behind them.

Conner Ives’s initial Spring/Summer 2024 run of 20 shirred jerseys sold out in one week. The pieces, which are vintage football kits stitched with elastic thread, were a riff on the brand’s 2022-launched shirred T-shirt — the most popular style that season, according to Ives. His hunch that a football version would do well was right, with the restock selling out in under an hour. Star power also played a role; between the first and second drops, Blackpink’s Jennie wore one of the tees in her first ever TikTok, adding to the hysteria, Ives says.

For Ives, reworking football jerseys is an aesthetic pursuit. “I was never really a sports fan, and being American I knew next to nothing about football,” he says. “I really fell in love with them for the same reason I love a vintage tee — a visible graphic language that feels not from this era. They remind me of [pieces] we used to do from cycling tops, with really acid-dosed colours and great graphics and logos. Maybe the appeal is the individuality?”

The approach aligns with how many consumers are shopping jerseys. “As football shirts have entered mainstream fashion, shoppers are focusing on the aesthetic of the shirt rather than looking for specific teams that they have an affinity for,” Panzoni says. Depop data shows that shoppers often choose a football shirt based on the colour and patterns, versus the team itself.

That said, the fact that fashion is making football shirts — and, by association, the sport itself — more accessible is significant beyond its aesthetic quality. Designer and fashion lecturer Hattie Crowther has been working with and subverting football tops (initially by creating corsets) since 2019, and uses her jerseys to critique and shift the traditionally closed-off narratives around the game. She created a custom corset for Tolami Benson for the Euros final.

“Transforming something as traditionally masculine as the football jersey into a piece that can be owned by anyone — female, queer, trans, you name it — is incredibly important to me,” Crowther says. “I want to challenge the notion that sports like football are predominantly owned by men. Sparking dialogue around these issues is a key part of my design narrative, and I hope to open up new spaces and conversations through my work.”

Charley Keighley, founder and designer of London-based brand Kitten, operates with a similar ethos. The premise of Kitten is to rework used, discarded garments. Beyond the obvious environmental benefits, she says, there’s also an element of turning an aesthetic on its head. In the case of jerseys, she says: “We are reappropriating an item that is inherently laddy and bringing it into the femme arena.”

Making space

Making space for women in football is a major value proposition for brands, experts agree. “Football jerseys enable women to be involved in the culture surrounding the game, as well as feel part of a community, which traditionally hasn’t been that welcoming to them,” The Future Labatory’s Rhodes says.

It goes both ways. Designers are creating space for demographics traditionally excluded from football’s laddy culture. And by playing in the football space, brands are also broadening out fashion’s engagement with sports.

To date, fashion has focused on sports traditionally associated with luxury and leisure. “This old-money sporting aesthetic certainly isn’t wavering, thanks to the rise in people taking up racquet sports,” says Rhodes. “However, leisure activities — and their accompanying style tribes — are now being embraced by a new, savvy and diverse audience.”

There’s a big brand opp here to go beyond just making the clothes, Rhodes says. “The main opportunity for brands is to create spaces for women to feel safe and included in football culture, whether that’s hosting sponsored women-only screenings of matches or partnering with female athletes for campaigns,” she says. “If women are buying into sports fandom and culture through alternative ways, how can you further engage them in the game and beyond this encourage them to take up the sport itself?”

Though it’s a positive that brands are getting creative in how they’re tapping the trend, they should be careful of missing the mark in terms of the sport’s cultural context, experts say.

“While it’s great to see these pieces being appreciated in new contexts, it’s important not to lose sight of the culture and legacy that these kits represent,” says Crowther. “This trend isn’t solely fuelled by events like the Euros; it’s also about the growing fashion appeal and the way football culture is increasingly influencing mainstream style,” she says.

To do so well, brands might look to collaborate not just with existing sports brands that have that level of understanding, but also with teams on the ground (like VFiles with Barnsley FC, and Puma).

“Brands have a significant opportunity and responsibility to engage more deeply with these issues within football,” Crowther says. “Beyond just participating, they should actively address and raise awareness about broader societal issues such as racism, homophobia and violence that often intersect with football culture. Brands have a platform and influence that can contribute positively to these conversations and promote inclusivity and social change.”

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