With the summer of sports approaching, the latest fashion franchise is signing high-profile sports stars to achieve a viral campaign spot. Burberry this week unveiled its football series featuring England’s finest Phil Foden and Eberechi Eze, while Jude Bellingham has stripped off for Kim Kardashian’s Skims.
There was once a shooting of football players in the city that caused mass ridicule. Consider the photo of the 2005 Manchester United football team – Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, John O’Shea and Paul Scholes – that still regularly makes the rounds on social media, in dodgy jeans and dad knits. In Rooney’s own words, “we all look terrible.”
But there is no longer a crisis of taste on the terrace about our football stars, who sign brand deals with major fashion houses, sit in the front row at their shows and wear what their stylists tell them.
Jay Hines has collaborated with England players Bukayo Saka and James Maddison, as well as a host of other remarkably well-dressed international ballers, including Kylian Mbappé and Joao Felix. “Footballers have always had personal shoppers, because they are so busy and just don’t have time to go shopping, or because they want the latest stuff and don’t know [what that is]. But having a stylist is something completely different,” he says.
Hines remembers 2016 as the period when footballers first started bringing stylists on board, and credits himself with many younger footballers’ decision to do so. “Héctor Bellerín was one of the first to ever start [working with a stylist]. We attended fashion weeks together and he really explored a different side that other footballers might have been afraid of. It paid off, Bellerin walked for Louis Vuitton during Paris Fashion Week 2019.
Jordan Clarke, the 24-year-old founder of the popular Instagram page Footballer Fits, also calls Bellerin one of the few footballers who really dabbled in high fashion before 2020. “The wave was still quiet then, apart from Bellerin and David Beckham before him there weren’t many players who were deeply into fashion,” he recalls.
Now Clarke says interest in fashion is widespread and has even become another form of competition between players. “More players want to fit in and compete with the other players, both on and off the field, with what they wear and how good their style is.” This has become clear from quick interviews with footballers, who are now asked as often as to who among their teammates has the best fashion sense as who has the best footwork.
As for what they wear? “The big three at the moment are Louis Vuitton, Chrome Hearts and Goyard,” says Clarke. “Louis Vuitton is absolutely number one in football at the moment. Between 2020 and 2022 there was this wave of Dior and Amiri, relying on Dior’s puffer coat, B22 shoes and skinny Amiri jeans. While footballers are now moving away from big brand logos and worrying about how expensive their outfit was, they are now more into individual pieces, what is unique, what they can get their hands on that no one else in the game can.” It makes sense: we live in a hypervisual age. Thanks to Instagram, everyone knows if you have the same creps as a footballer in the German national team, the Serbian national team and the Danish national team, so standing out has never been more important.
It also creeps into brand partnerships. While Beckham used his retirement to get even closer to the fashion world (he just announced a multi-year design deal with BOSS), there are already younger players. Kylian Mbappe led the way in 2021 by signing for Dior, followed by Jack Grealish’s £10m deal with Gucci in 2022 and Bukayo Saka became Burberry ambassador in 2023. Now there are rumors linking England star striker Jude Bellingham high fashion heavyweight Louis Vuitton.
In addition to Hines, some ballers have dedicated stylists and personal shoppers who help shape all their looks. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, widely regarded as one of the most stylish players in the Premier League, teams up with Georgia Medley, who also styles Michaela Coel and Maya Jama. Meanwhile, Bellingham gets all his finery from Sunny Kaur, a personal shopper based at Selfridges. Even retired footballers are opting for a late move into fashion, with Arsenal legend and pundit Ian Wright walking for menswear brand Labrum at London Fashion Week last September. Women’s football hasn’t been left untouched either, with Leah Williamson taking a front row seat at Gucci’s cruise show at the Tate Modern last month, while retired England right-back Alex Scott was snapped up as a new face in M&S’s active range.
“Brands are really seeing the influence of footballers these days,” says Clarke. “I know this from my personal experience of running Footballer Fits and seeing the number of requests we get to find items for players to wear.” He continues: “They become fashion icons. You only have to look at Jude Bellingham’s Instagram and see him get between one and two million likes on a post, which is even more than the Kim Kardashians of the world, to see that.” One photo, showing Bellingham wearing head-to-toe Louis Vuitton at Pharrell Williams’ first show as Creative Director, received more than 2.4 million likes — that’s 411 percent more than Kim Kardashian’s most recent post. No wonder she chose him for her Skims campaign.
If you didn’t think the likes of Bellingham or Grealish helped with their looks, you’d be forgiven for not knowing – it’s not as simple as when actors or musicians have stylists, Hines explains. “Many don’t mind telling people they have a stylist, but often they don’t get red carpet clothes like actors do. These are just more everyday looks, you don’t really get that many photos of them wearing it.
It is a smart move to make a name for yourself as stylish. Football careers are short: according to the BBC, the average length of a professional footballer’s career is eight years. But if you turn it around like Beckham and establish yourself as a style icon outside of sport, you can close big deals with fashion houses years after you leave the field.
As always, it’s a tricky tightrope to walk. Football fans quickly become homophobic and misogynistic when they see fashion-conscious clothing. Most memorably, Dominic Calvert-Lewin sent football fans into a frenzy in 2021 when he appeared on the cover of Homme+ magazine in flared shorts that loosely resembled a skirt.
And just this week, France national team player Jules Koundé started feverish debates online when he showed up on international duty wearing a pair of Cuban heels. But it doesn’t even have to be an overtly feminine item to get the blood boiling; just the sight of a patterned jersey can send fans west.
Clarke says these outdated views may finally be changing. “When Footballer Fits started four years ago [its followers] had a very traditional mentality: ‘stick to football, stick to what you are good at.’ But now we see young fans encouraging players to express themselves, be themselves and show off their best qualities […] And in turn, fans have enhanced their own style by wanting to look like their favorite athletes.”
This is even clearly visible in London’s street style scene, which has embraced blokecore with open arms in recent years. And fashion has also joined the terrace aesthetic. Martine Rose makes half and half football shirts and decorates them with pearls. Grace Wales Bonner sells sweaters that look like they came straight from a workout. And Foday Dumbuya, the founder of fashion brand Labrum, recently admitted that he was inspired by players on the field when creating his garments.
So if you notice that the England squad is looking unusually chic this year, just know that this is the start of something good. Although Hines points out that it may not have reached the entire team yet. “Someone needs to tell Harry Kane to hit me because we need to sort him out!” he jokes.