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Football, futbol, soccer, diski - the beautiful game. With over 3.5 - 5 billion spectators and over 210 leagues spanning across the globe, add a significant World Cup every 4 years and you’ve got yourself one of the biggest sports in the world. 

The intersection of fashion and football is no novelty to society. Millenials and early Gen Zs will remember the popularisation of the Brazilian soccer jersey in the noughties. Reinterpreted through skin-tight silhouettes for women and worn atop exaggerated baggy jeans on men - the soccer jersey, flooded across cosmopolitan streets world wide, was daringly decontextualised. 

Winning the 2002 FIFA World Cup would make soccer powerhouse Brazil five-time champions, further stretching their lead for the most World Cup wins between tailing Germany and Italy. The proliferation of the colours blue, green, white and yellow in the streets communicated a shared ethos. It pronounced victory, prowess and flair for the global south and other developing countries. A win for one was a win for all.

Locally, although knocked out during the group stages, Bafana Bafana had participated in their second World Cup for the second consecutive time since the 1994 elections that saw South Africa reformed into a democracy. An AFCON 1996 win as well as two World Cup qualifiers made the young national team an underdog worth watching. Accompanied by TKZEE’s Shibobo, green and gold would be the elected colour of prosperity and symbolise a new era for the South African national team and its supporters. 

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Today, the soccer jersey on the runway precedes patriotism and club loyalty to recount the tales of everyday people. By parading collections that nod to soccer culture, designers subvert the elitism still prevalent within the fashion industry today. Picture this:  an institution erected on classism evolving to embrace a sport often relegated to degenerate status due to its affinity for the working class. 

This is the work fashion designers such as Martine Rose, Wales Bonner and David Koma are doing to deconstruct and rebuild new notions that merge fashion and football while eradicating polarised misconceptions of what truly constitutes the latter. The results? Gender-free tailored player suiting, reimagined soccer boots, socks reminiscent of the pitch and goalie gloves long adorned by soccer supporters.

At root of soccer lies the single most important thing: community. Albeit strong stereotypes and rampant discrimination within soccer persist, the sport possesses the very thing that poses a threat to the  expansion of the fashion industry, the ability to see beyond binaries, to be all-accepting and all-encompassing. For most supporters aspiration, unity, support and sheer joy (sometimes loss) are feelings conjured by that luscious green pitch or those brown grains of sand where the dream begins. 

Soccer gear is more than just fragments of clothing. Within those threads lives the humanity of over half of the world’s population, a strong case against the belief that soccer has no place in fashion.