
feature
by:
Jamie Clifton
This season, the Gunners isn’t Arsenal’s only nickname.
Perhaps it’s their wavy third shirts, or all the training merch they’ve dropped with adidas. Or their many luxury fashion collaborations, from the Arsenal Women's kits by Stella McCartney to October’s capsule collection with cult streetwear brand Aries. Or maybe just the fact they’ve been churning out enough Arsenal gear to stock an entire department store?
Either way, it’s no surprise that the moniker “Fashion FC” is starting to stick.
Here’s the thing: every football club releases clothing collections these days. After a Liverpool Converse puffer jacket? No problem. A £120 Manchester United Paul Smith necktie? Sorted. Some of you might even be compelled to spend £35 on a backpack from the “Definitely City” collection, co-designed by Man City lifer Noel Gallagher to commemorate 30 years of Oasis’ debut album Definitely Maybe.
At the luxury end of the style spectrum, Italian clubs have unsurprisingly been leading the way. Earlier this year, the Business of Fashion
called AC Milan the “football team that finally got fashion right” while Esquire dubbed Venezia the original “Fashion FC” back in 2022, not long after the club hired former Supreme and Marc Jacobs designer Diego Moscosoni as creative director.
So what’s inspired Arsenal to this title - even ironically - over other English clubs?
One explanation might be that conscious courting of the fashion world. As labels continue to lift from football - Balenciaga is flogging an “oversized soccer T-shirt” for £750, among endless other examples - Arsenal has leaned into designer collabs more than any other Premier League team.
"When you're designing collaborations, there's often a lot of guarding," says Aries founder Sofia Prantera. "But Arsenal is really collaborative. It feels like they’re establishing themselves as a lifestyle brand outside of sports.”
It’s worth mentioning that the nickname isn’t being used earnestly by Arsenal fans who believe their side is Met Gala-worthy - which would of course be deeply embarrassing - or by rivals to imply the club is all style over substance. Instead, it tends to come with exasperation from fans who can’t resist reaching for their wallet whenever the club releases another pair of “European training shorts.”
“Fashion FC strikes again,” is a typical comment on an Instagram post, before parting with yet another £65. And really, this particular side of the story starts more than three decades ago, with the “bruised banana.”
In 1991, Adidas unveiled Arsenal’s new away kit, a loud patterned number in the team’s historic blue and yellow, hence the fruity nickname. Lots of people liked it, lots more took the piss - and it was a pretty jarring design, even for the early-1990s. Three decades later, it’s one of Arsenal’s most beloved vintage shirts, with the club now selling an entire line based on its distinctive lightning bolt pattern.
Adidas had used the print - which used to be called “Italia” - on other European kits during the late-’80s, but Arsenal’s garish color clash made it an icon, and the out-there design set the stage for the experimental away and third kits that have become a mainstay of modern football.
In the 2010s, as football’s global reach surged, European clubs spotted an opportunity to ramp up merchandise revenue. On the pitch, the bigger kit suppliers - think Nike, Adidas, Puma - invested in reimagining shirt design and marketing, taking risks with louder prints and color combos. A huge success story was PSG's Jordan-branded kit, which increased the club’s merchandise sales in the United States by a massive 470 percent in 2018.
Recognizing that fans want to integrate football into their wardrobes without necessarily going full kit, clubs also started designing lifestyle collections that leaned less on traditional sportswear and drew more from streetwear and luxury fashion.
Arsenal was actually conservative at the start of this era. But after switching kit suppliers from Nike to Puma in 2014, they began dipping their toes into more adventurous designs, and in 2019 launched their renewed adidas partnership with an updated bruised banana kit, tweaked to fit modern FIFA and UEFA regulations.
Since then, it’s been non-stop. Even if you’re not an Arsenal fan, it’s hard to deny how strong their recent run of shirts has been. And while there are understandably some mixed feelings about football clubs fully embracing fashion, Arsenal is clearly a cut above the rest of the Premier League. The curation of collaborators is well considered, and each collection does something smart with the Arsenal brand.
In 2021, the club collaborated on a limited edition collection with the luxury LA streetwear brand 424. In 2022, ahead of Notting Hill Carnival, they honored their Jamaican fanbase with a flag-inspired jersey. The following year saw a collaboration with OG London streetwear brand Maharishi, as well as a Stella McCartney-designed away kit for Arsenal Women.
This year’s third shirt promo video was made with the photography-focused lifestyle brand PLACES+FACES. For the away kit, London menswear label Labrum drew on the colors of the pan-African flag to celebrate the club’s African fanbase, and followed up by hosting its SS25 runway show at the Emirates (featuring a catwalk cameo from Declan Rice). Finally, the big buzzy one: the Aries collection.
“It took Arsenal somewhere they maybe wouldn’t normally go, and we reached an audience we’d never have a chance to communicate with,” says Aries’ Prantera. “It ended up going down well, I think. The scarf sold out in two minutes.”
Modern football’s constant merch drops are frequently criticized as cynical cash grabs, but in Arsenal’s case the demand is clearly there. The majority of the Aries collection sold out, much like the club’s other recent collaborations, and during the 2022-23 season they unloaded a record number of jerseys, suggesting the fashion-forward approach is paying off.
The question is when other Premier League clubs will follow suit. Last year, Chelsea partnered on a limited collection with menswear designer Nicholas Daley, and Crystal Palace became the first Premier League club to hire a creative Director. With Arsenal setting the pace, it can’t be long before there’s another contender for the title of Fashion FC.