FC is for Fashion Club, Not Football
How football clubs of all sorts venture outside the pitch to make some noise and get this bread with the help of fashion.
I was deep in my Instagram feed the other night when I somehow emerged to an article about FC Venezia merch on Esquire. Being almost as far from the world of football as one could get I found it intriguing that a fashion magazine flew in one of its journalists to Italy to write a whole article on merchandise clothing by a team I’ve never heard of. Even more so when I found myself reading it through till the end. So if you happened to be indifferent to soccer like I am I invite you on this journey with me. Even more so if you are in the know.
So, there is this football club in Italy called Venezia. They don’t have much success on the pitch, at least from an outsider’s point of view. Yes, they grew from Italy’s Serie D league to Serie A in just 5 years which indeed is a major achievement. But this has been the only success for the team in 20 years. And they were relegated back to Serie B last year. Not to mention that the club filed for bankruptcy three times in 10 years.
In 2020, the club was acquired by an American company with a former CEO of the New York Stock Exchange Duncan Niederauer as the club’s president. With him joined a new chief brand officer Ted Philipakos. It’s him who’s responsible for what’s been called «the world’s most fashionable soccer club» by GQ.
In the mid-2010s Ted saw a shift in global perception of football when fashion appropriated the game’s aesthetic for a broader audience. Meaning that you don’t have to know a thing about soccer anymore to admire a football jersey. Think Stone Island moving from ultras to mainstream rappers. Or celebrities wearing Thrasher t-shirts.
«It just felt like a moment where a small club could engage more people than ever before, especially with stories that went beyond the pitch,» — said Ted in an interview to Esquire
The rest is history. The club signed the Italian sportswear brand Kappa instead of Nike to gain control over designs and launched a four-shirt kit for season 21/22. Three of those shirts were ranked among the 20 best of the season by SoccerBible. I don’t know how influential SoccerBible is but the fact that this is a website dedicated to covering «football product, culture, and design» and not the game itself does mean something.
Despite the team’s performance, its merchandise continued to win hearts outside of the soccer world with the help of fashion creatives and collaboration projects like the limited edition «Rain Collection» and swimwear with Venetian brand Lido.
I remember Chris Kontos, a photographer and founder of Kennedy Magazine (whom I admire so much I even managed to take an interview with Chris himself), posted his photos of a beautiful woman in a football jersey. But I didn’t pay attention back then. Well, because I haven’t been following soccer and hence haven’t been feeling entitled to wear football jerseys.
But that’s just another example of how you don’t have to know a thing about the subject you want to be associated with. The fact that it’s on at the moment is enough. You might even get a random shout-out from a fellow enthusiast for repping a piece of clothing you both know nothing about. In fact, 96% of FC Venezia merch sales come from outside of Italy. Don’t tell me they all follow the Italian team from Serie B.
When a product finds its market you scale it. That’s exactly what Ted Philipakos did by stepping as the president of the second-tier Greek football team Athens Kallithea FC. In October 2022 the club unveiled its new kit by Kappa, shot on a beautiful young woman in washed-out jeans and penny loafers by Chris Kontos.
Upper echelon teams have been doing this for years. We are just two weeks in 2023, but PSG has already announced collections with Jordan and Dior, Juventus went formal with Loro Piana, and Milan debuted Off-White. Not to mention all the projects that Patta, Aries, Palace, Stussy and even Supreme have realised over the last decade.
Ted might have started the small-clubs-big-fashions trend but others catch up as well. Check out Red Star FC which plays in the French third-tier division: a Kappa kit designed by Lack of Guidance shot on a young female model in the streets of a French city. A corresponding video to translate the mood is attached. Not to mention the club collaborated with the major media outlet Vice and the Amsterdam-based fashion label Daily Paper before.
The question here is how many more football kits the world needs before the trend loses its value? Major clubs will surely find their way out. As for the smaller teams, hopefully, by the time it happens, they will earn enough money to sponsor better performance. Better yet, if they’ll be able to give their true fans what they deserve.