The northern hemisphere is deep in summer. Football has been on hold for months. The leagues and European competitions of the past season feel like part of an increasingly distant past. The weekend routine, those rainy afternoons in every corner of northern and central Europe, also feels far away. Those who can afford it find themselves in a completely different setting, dressed lightly, by the sea, sometimes with a drink in hand, far from home. Each of them has made a choice they can’t usually make during the year: the clothes they wear aren’t their work clothes, but their own. The ones they choose at the very moment they feel entirely free — or at least construct the illusion of temporary freedom, with greater or lesser success. And in this setting, one visual trait stands out: the colours people are dressed in — their hats, their shirts, perhaps their bag, their duffel, or the towel they carry. Many, more and more each year, are dressed in colours that travel with them — red, blue and white, black, green, stripes, vertical or horizontal, collars, sleeve details — all bearing a badge, small or large, sometimes more than one, and the name of one, two or even several companies. It’s the football tribe, far from its natural habitat, but carrying with it a part of its identity — to the point that every summer retreat looks like a vast football tournament. The football shirt arrives with the luggage at every corner of the globe. Not headed for another stadium, not as part of an organised event — but spontaneously, in the best moments of the year for the one who wears it.
This scene is hardly unusual these days. Especially in summer, when transfer news may be the only thing happening in football — particularly in years without international tournaments — there is nothing else that connects the fan to what normally fills their days: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and weekends. Yet it’s also a season that is slowly becoming another milestone in the football calendar — much like fashion seasons — the time when new kits are unveiled and launched on the market, when professional clubs aim to sell them faster than the season tickets for the coming year. In many cases, their prices are comparable. The advertising campaigns that accompany them are in a category of their own: urban aesthetic showcases which, in many cases, reflect a club’s identity — either the one it already has or the one it wants to construct. It will be bought in summer, worn during this festival of football worship that forms the carefree memories we’ll carry into winter — when it will reappear under a coat, over thick clothes in the stadium, and endure the full season until one day it joins a personal collection as a keepsake. The fact that this entire narrative begins in an environment so removed from football action highlights how powerful football clothing has become — carrying the sport’s broader cultural essence far beyond the pitch.
From the pitch to the streets
Long before the football shirt became a marketable item — for the first time in the 1973–74 season, when Admiral produced Leeds United’s kit — the development of sportswear was already influencing everyday fashion. Sports clothing, by its very design, is meant to grant the human body as much freedom of movement as possible while reducing any discomfort from surrounding conditions. That need led to experimentation with new materials — lighter and more durable — in a process that embraced each era’s technological capabilities.
Its influence on women’s fashion was particularly radical. In Victorian England, the age of organised sport’s rise, women were excluded from public life, and this was reinforced by their accepted modes of dress — complex, often heavy garments that constrained and completely concealed the human form, part of a web of social norms restricting women’s freedom of movement. A striking example is the controversy around how bicycles clashed with women’s clothing, preventing them from using this new form of individual transport to venture far from home. But social developments and the women’s movement gradually led to emancipation and increased female participation in sports.
As women entered the sporting world, acceptable attire shifted: from corsets and long gowns to more fitted garments resembling men’s clothing, especially from the late 19th into the early 20th century. This shift, of course, faced disapproval from conservative circles, which mocked both the clothing and women’s athletic participation — an absurd backlash culminating, perhaps, in the Football Association’s 1921 blanket ban on women’s football.
Fortunately, football wasn’t the only sport. Others — like equestrianism or tennis — deemed sufficiently “modest” by conservative elites, helped develop sportswear that would make its way from pitch to pavement, not merely gaining acceptance in daily life, but producing iconic fashion items. René Lacoste’s so-called “polo shirt” is perhaps the most emblematic example.
Throughout the 20th century, more and more fabrics first developed for sport became commonplace in everyday wear — and so did the cuts. Arguably, the pop culture peak of the ’80s and ’90s saw latex and polyester take centre stage in young people’s night-time wardrobes. One might say that sport served as the spontaneous, organic lab for mainstream fashion and mass-produced trends.
The football shirt beyond the stadium
The pioneer of the football shirt’s emergence beyond the pitch was, as mentioned, Admiral. After securing the rights to produce Leeds United’s kit, they quickly expanded — striking similar deals with Manchester United, Tottenham, West Ham and other major English clubs, as well as NASL teams in the US. These early replica shirts weren’t intended for the pitch, but for the stands — and increasingly for parks and playgrounds, where street football reigned. Fans in the stands, who previously had only their club-coloured scarf (often two-tone) as winter match gear, now had a garment that visually connected them to their team — transforming the club into something more than just the team on the pitch: a symbolic entity that encompassed its entire loyal following. Children, meanwhile, felt a piece of their heroes’ glory as they played in the park in the same shirts.
By the 1970s, other British sportswear companies — Umbro, Patrick, Bukta — followed Admiral’s lead, expanding the market significantly. Clubs, too, benefited, having until then lived in a fairly amateur era in terms of kit supply. Before shirts became commercial items, clubs paid fixed amounts for kits. After that shift, shirt sales became a source of revenue — to the point where kit supplier deals are now among the most valuable contracts in professional clubs’ income portfolios.
At the same time, though, while the shirt became a symbol of passionate supporters and aspiring children, it remained tied to football spaces. Another aesthetic emerged from the terraces, where organised groups — often engaged in violence — embraced anonymity and built a distinctive fashion: jeans, trainers or black boots, leather jackets. From the terraces of English stadiums, a new clothing category was born — named after them: the casuals. Who would have imagined the word “casuals” would one day evoke comfort, not rebellious subcultures!
But the shirt — both the player’s and the replica on shop shelves — was just getting started. Its most iconic moments have arrived only in recent years.
In every corner of the globe
Football shirt sales have boomed over time. Since the 1990s, knock-off versions have filled street stalls and corner shops across the world. The high cost of the genuine article — due not just to production, but to the emblem’s intellectual property — made replicas an attractive alternative. Football, after all, is “the ballet of the working class,” the dance of the poor — often their only real source of joy — and everyone wanted a cheaper ticket into this global culture. Lower-cost fabrics, basic print techniques, and tweaks to avoid being identical to the originals filled the streets, especially in lower-income regions — shirts in club colours, with player names and numbers, now a standard feature since rule changes allowed shirts to be player-specific rather than just position-based.
Even though authentic replicas used superior materials and high-end design, the coexistence of cheap versions — combined with the shirt’s muddy, sweaty, physical origins — gave it a reputation as an “improper” garment for formal settings. But even that boundary would be broken.
The generations who grew up with football shirts never stopped wearing them. No one ever defined an age limit. And so, older fans kept them in their wardrobes, now with fewer elder critics around, gradually liberating their use. The cold winter remained a barrier — the shirt is designed to keep heat away from the body, not preserve it — so it’s hardly ideal for northern European winters. But in summer? It thrives.
As generations aged within their football shirts, the next wave observed their widespread use in relaxed settings — further blurring the boundaries of when and where they could be worn. Gen Z picked up the baton from their shyer millennial predecessors and, with the push of sportswear companies, turned the football shirt into a garment for all occasions. Today, American campuses are full of kits — mostly from English and Spanish clubs. A walk through any square, supermarket, shopping mall, or cinema complex smells of the stands. The football shirt is everywhere.
Capitalism strikes back
Sportswear companies didn’t just embrace this shift — they helped create it. For decades, new kits were launched by players in full match gear — shirt, shorts, socks. Slowly, advertising campaigns moved away from the pitch, showcasing shirts where they’re truly worn: with casual trousers, jeans, blazers — even suit jackets. These companies now hold in their hands not just a product, but a tool to sell more than just a football club’s symbol: human culture itself — and they do it for free.
Football is the only sport with such a deep, global connection to local communities. A club is a piece of a city’s geography, history, and culture. Designing shirts that reflect local urban identity — and presenting them near architectural or human landmarks — makes the product even more appealing. It’s not just about sport anymore: it’s about the cultural identity of the wearer.
More than that: the ability to participate in any local culture through the symbolism of a football shirt now speaks to people who may never have set foot in that place. What once required literature or cinema to dream about — the intangible cultural heritage of humanity — now has a material outlet in a uniquely symbolic commercial product.
This multi-layered use has created distinct categories of shirt-wearers: core fans who see it as a badge of loyalty — with clubs even offering free newborn kits, as Bologna did last season; distant supporters who wear it to feel spiritually close to a club seen only on screen; aesthetic lovers drawn to colours and design, especially the more creatively free “away kits”; and fans of star players who collect their idols’ shirts.
Decades of this commerce have also built another market: retro kits. Rare and old designs now fetch huge sums. Sportswear brands recreate classic shirts from 20–30 years ago, or go even further — making vintage-style shirts from the 1920s, ’50s, ’60s, even from eras when kits weren’t even made by major manufacturers. A parallel economy of collecting and reselling old shirts is thriving in football’s cultural capitals. Legendary patterns, iconic stripes — they’re all in high demand.
More than a product
The trade in football shirts has become a full-fledged industry — with its own design language, its own tech innovations, its own marketing style that generates a secondary layer of cultural expression, and of course, its own growing audience. These consumers don’t just see themselves as customers — they pay the price of entry into a shared identity.
The football summer doesn’t begin with transfer talk — big signings usually come at the end of the window anyway. It begins with the real market: the kit launches for the upcoming season. Their unveiling is now an entire creative ritual — expensive campaigns, visual storytelling, and taglines. Whole media outlets exist just to cover this side of football — leaking early designs, discussing concept art, and announcing the latest drops, especially from clubs in the top leagues. In just 50 years, the football shirt has become a category of its own — a visible expression of passion, expanding into more and more spheres of life. A material imprint of the joy that continues to unite people — those who, in defiance of time, stay devoted and keep dreaming of the immortality of their childhood ecstasy.
