by With the summer of sports approaching, the latest fashion flex is signing up high-profile sports stars to land a viral campaign spot. Burberry unveiled its football range this week with England superstars Phil Foden and Eberechi Eze, while Jude Bellingham has stepped out for Kim Kardashian’s Skims.
Sometimes, footballers out on the town made jokes. Recall if you like the picture of Manchester United’s 2005 football team – Wayne Rooney, Rio Ferdinand, John O’Shea and Paul Scholes – who often do the rounds on social media, in dodgy jeans and Dad-knitwear. In Rooney’s own words “we all look terrible.”
But the stage’s taste crisis no longer dominates our football stars, who are negotiating brand deals with big fashion houses, sitting front row at their shows and doing what the stylists tell them.
Jay Hines has worked with England players Bukayo Saka and James Maddison, as well as many other well-dressed international ballers, including Kylian Mbappé and Joao Felix. “Footballers have always had personal shoppers, either because they’re so busy they 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 a completely different thing,” he says.
Hines remembers 2016 as the time when footballers started bringing stylists on board for the first time, and he credits himself with the decision of many younger footballers 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 exploring another side that other footballers might be afraid of.” It paid off, Bellerin walked for Louis Vuitton at Paris Fashion Week 2019.
Jordan Clarke, the 24-year-old founder behind the hit Footballer Fits page on Instagram, also notes Bellerin as one of the only footballers who really looked high way ahead of 2020. “The wave was still quiet the at that time, apart from Bellerin and David Beckham before him, there were not too many players deep in fashion,” he recalls.
Now, Clarke says there is a lot of interest in fashion, and it has 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 wear and how good their style is.” This has come to light in quick question interviews with football players, who are now likely to be asked which of their teammates have the best sense of fashion and who has the best footwork.
What are they 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 the Dior puffer coat and B22 shoes and Amiri skinny jeans were relied upon. Although footballers are now moving away from big branded logos and taking care of how expensive their kit was, now they are more into individual pieces, what is unique, what they can get their hands on that cannot with anyone else in the game.” 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 is also entering into brand partnerships. Although Beckham has used his retirement to edge closer to the world of fashion (he announced a multi-year design contract with BOSS), there are already younger players. Kylian Mbappé led the way in 2021 by signing with Dior, while Jack Grealish signed a £10m deal with Gucci in 2022 and Bukayo Saka became a Burberry ambassador in 2023. Now, England star striker Jude Bellingham is being linked with heavy fashion. heavy Louis Louis Vuitton.
In addition to Hines, some ballers have dedicated stylists and personal shoppers who help craft all of their looks. Dominic Calvert-Lewin, widely regarded as one of the Premier League’s most stylish players, works with Georgia Medley, who also styles Michaela Coel and Maya Jama. Meanwhile Bellingham gets all his finesse from Sunny Kaur, a personal shopper based in Selfridges. Even retired footballers are opting for a late pivot in fashion, with Arsenal legend and sponsor Ian Wright walking for menswear brand Labrum at London Fashion Week last September. Women’s football is no exception either – Leah Williamson headlined Gucci’s cruise show at the Tate Modern last month, while retired England right-back Alex Scott has been tapped as the new face of the M&S active range.
“Brands are really seeing the influence of footballers these days,” says Clarke. “I know from personal experience of running Footballer Fits and the number of requests we get to find items that players wear.” He continues: “They are becoming fashion icons. You only have to look at Jude Bellingham’s Instagram and see how he’s getting between a million and two million likes on a post, which is more than the Kim Kardashians of the world, to see that.” One picture, which shows Bellingham wearing a Louis Vuitton headpiece for Pharrell Williams’ first show as Creative Director, received more than 2.4 million likes — 411 percent more than Kim Kardashian’s most recent post. No wonder she chopped it 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 simple as styling actors or musicians, explains Hines. “People don’t mind saying they have a stylist but often they don’t get clothes for red carpets like actors do. These are more of an everyday look, you really don’t get as many pictures of them wearing them.”
Making a name for yourself as stylish is a smart move. 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 establish yourself as a style icon outside of sport, you could be signing big deals with fashion houses years after you leave the field.
As ever, it’s a tricky tightrope to walk. Football fans are quick to turn homophobic and misogynistic at the sight of any fashion outfit. Notably, Dominic Calvert-Lewin sent football fans into a gammon frenzy in 2021 when he appeared on the cover of Homme+ magazine wearing flared shorts that looked loosely like a skirt.
And just this week, French national team player Jules Koundé sparked heated debates online when he turned up for international duty wearing a pair of cube heels. But it doesn’t even have to be a particularly feminine item to get the blood boiling – the sight of a patterned sweater vest can set fans off.
Clarke says these old-fashioned attitudes may finally be changing. “Back when Footballer Fits started four years ago [its followers] you had a very traditional mindset about ‘stick to football, stick to what you’re good at.’ But now we see young fans encouraging the players to express themselves, to be themselves, to show off their best gear […] And in turn the fans have improved their own styles by trying to look like their favorite athletes.”
This can be seen even in the London street style scene, which has embraced blokecore with open arms in recent years. And fashion, too, has followed into the aesthetic scene. Martine Rose is creating half and half football shirts and embellishing them with pearls. Grace Wales Bonner is selling jerseys that look like they came straight out of a training session. And Foday Dumbuya, founder of fashion brand Labrum, recently admitted that he was inspired by players on the pitch when creating his clothes.
So if you’re noticing that the England squad looks unusually chic this year, you just know you’re on to something good. Although Hines suggests that the entire team may not have achieved it yet. “Someone needs to tell Harry Kane to beat me because we need to sort it out!” he makes a joke.
