With an incoming summer of sport, the latest fashion flex is signing high profile sports stars to hit a viral campaign spot. Burberry this week unveiled its football series with England’s finest Phil Foden and Eberechi Eze, while Jude Bellingham has stripped off for Kim Kardashian’s Skims.
Once upon a time, a shot of footballers out on the town caused mass derision. Recall if you will the picture of the 2005 Manchester United football team - Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, John O’Shea and Paul Scholes - that still frequently does the rounds on social media, in dodgy jeans and Dad-knitwear. In Rooney’s own words “we all look terrible.”
But a terrace taste crisis no longer reigns over our footballing stars, who are snapping up brand deals with major fashion houses, sitting front row at their shows and putting on what their stylists tell them to.
Jay Hines has worked with England players Bukayo Saka and James Maddison, as well as a host of other notably well-dressed international ballers, including Kylian Mbappé and Joao Felix. “Footballers have always had personal shoppers, because they’re so busy and they just don’t have time to go shopping, or because they want the newest stuff and don’t know [what that is]. But to have a stylist is a totally different thing,” he says.
Hines remembers 2016 as the period where footballers first started bringing stylists on board, and credits himself with a lot of younger footballers’ decision to do so. “Héctor Bellerín was one of the first to ever start [working with a stylist]. We were attending fashion weeks together, and he was really exploring a different side that other footballers may have been afraid to.” It paid off, Bellerin walked for Louis Vuitton at Paris Fashion Week 2019.
Jordan Clarke, the 24-year-old founder behind hit Instagram page Footballer Fits, also notes Bellerin as one of the only footballers to really foray into high fashion pre-2020. “The wave was still quiet back then, aside from Bellerin and David Beckham before him, there weren't too many players deep in fashion,” he recalls.
Now, Clarke says an interest in fashion is rife, and has even become another form of competition between players. “More players want to fit in and compete with the other players on and off the pitch with what they’re wearing and how good their style is.” This has become obvious in quick-fire question interviews with football players, who are now just as likely to be asked which of their teammates has the best fashion sense as they are about who has the best footwork.
As for what they’re wearing? “The big three right now are Louis Vuitton, Chrome Hearts and Goyard,” says Clarke. “Louis Vuitton is definitely number one in the football space right now. Between 2020 and 2022 there was this Dior and Amiri wave, where there was a reliance on Dior’s puffer coat and B22 shoes and skinny Amiri jeans. Whereas now footballers are moving away from big branded logos and caring about how expensive their outfit was, now they’re more into individual pieces, what’s unique, what they can get their hands on that no one else in the game can.” It makes sense - we live in a hyper visual age. Thanks to Instagram everyone knows if you have the same creps as a footballer on the German national team, and the Serbian national team, and the Danish national team, so standing out has never been so important.
It's creeping through into brand partnerships too. While Beckham’s used his retirement to edge even closer to the fashion world (he just announced a multi-year designing deal with BOSS), younger players are already there. Kylian Mbappé led the way in 2021 by signing with Dior, followed by Jack Grealish’s £10m deal with Gucci in 2022 and Bukayo Saka becoming a Burberry ambassador in 2023. Now, there’s whispers of England star striker Jude Bellingham being linked with high fashion heavyweight Louis Vuitton.
As well as Hines, some ballers have dedicated stylists and personal shoppers who help craft all their looks. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, who is widely regarded as one the most stylish players in the Premier League, works with Georgia Medley, who also styles Michaela Coel and Maya Jama. Meanwhile Bellingham sources all his finery from Sunny Kaur, a personal shopper based at Selfridges. Even retired footballers are opting for a late pivot to fashion, with Arsenal legend and pundit Ian Wright walking for menswear brand Labrum at London Fashion Week last September. Women’s football hasn’t gone untouched, either - Leah Williamson was front row at Gucci’s cruise show at the Tate Modern last month, while retired England right-back Alex Scott has been snapped up as a new face of M&S’s active range.
“Brands are really seeing the influence of footballers these days,” Clarke says. “I know that from my personal experience of running Footballer Fits and seeing the number of requests we get to find items that players are wearing.” He continues: “They’re becoming fashion icons. You’ve only gotta look at Jude Bellingham’s Instagram and see how he’s getting between one to two million likes on a post, which is even more than the Kim Kardashians of the world, to see that.” One picture, which shows Bellingham wearing head to toe Louis Vuitton for Pharrell Williams’ first show as Creative Director, gained over 2.4 million likes - that’s 411 per cent higher than Kim Kardashian’s most recent post. No wonder she snapped him up for her Skims campaign.
If you didn’t think the likes of Bellingham or Grealish had help with their looks, you’d be forgiven for not knowing - it’s not as straightforward as when actors or musicians have stylists, explains Hines. “A lot don’t mind telling people that they have a stylist but lots of the time they’re not getting clothes for red carpets like actors are. These are just more day-to-day looks, you don’t really get as many pictures of them when they’re wearing it.”
It’s 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 bend it like Beckham and cement yourself as a style icon outside of the sport, you could be signing major deals with fashion houses years after quitting the pitch.
As ever, it’s a tricky tightrope to walk. Football fans are quick to turn homophobic and misogynistic at the sight of any fashion-forward dressing. Most memorably, Dominic Calvert-Lewin sent football fans into a gammon-faced rage in 2021 when he appeared on the cover of Homme+ magazine wearing flared shorts that loosely resembled a skirt.
And just this week, French national team player Jules Koundé started feverish debates online when he turned up to international duty wearing a pair of cuban heels. But it doesn’t even need to be an overtly feminine item to get the blood boiling - the mere sight of a patterned sweater vest can send fans west.
Clarke says these old-fashioned attitudes may finally be changing. “Back when Footballer Fits started four years ago [its followers] had a very traditional mindset of ‘sticking to football, stick to what you’re good at.’ But now we’re seeing young fans encourage players to express themselves, be themselves, show off their best fits [...] And in turn the fans have improved their own styles by wanting to be like their favourite athletes.”
This is even evident amongst London’s street style scene, which has embraced blokecore with open arms over recent years. And fashion, too, has leant into the terrace aesthetic. Martine Rose is creating half and half football shirts and adorning them with pearls. Grace Wales Bonner is selling jerseys that look like they came straight out of a training session. And Foday Dumbuya, the founder of fashion brand Labrum, recently admitted to being inspired by players on the pitch when creating his garments.
So, if you’re noticing the England squad looking unusually chic this year, just know it’s the start of something good. Although Hines points out it might not have made it to the whole team yet. “Someone needs to tell Harry Kane to hit me up because we’ve got to sort him out!” he jokes.
