The history of the sash, a football shirt status symbol

New York Times

19 hours ago

This article is part of our Kitted Out series, an exploration of the impact of soccer kits on culture and fashion.
Whether it is the red stripe of Peru, River Plate or Rayo Vallecano, the diagonal sash — in all its forms and colourways — is fundamental to football kit heritage. But where does it come from and who started the trend? That depends on who you ask.
In their early days, football shirts were completely plain, so to distinguish two opposing teams, it is believed that a sash band was first introduced as a tool for players to differentiate between team-mates and the opposition.
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'It's plausible that early versions were not part of the shirt itself, but rather separate sashes worn over the kit and tucked into the shorts,' Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster, says. 'This would have been impractical during play, which may explain why it didn't become widespread until later, when it could be fully integrated into the shirt design.'
According to Historical Football Kits, as the game in England was developing in the 19th century — specifically in schools and universities in the lead-up to clubs being officially formed — 'players would turn out in whatever they had to hand and teams would be distinguished by wearing distinctively coloured caps, scarves or sashes over cricket whites'.
One of the earliest instances of a sash design on an official club kit traces back not to Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Lima, Peru, but to Lancashire and the former mill town of Burnley.
Approaching the final decade of the Industrial Revolution in 1887, Burnley wore a white shirt with a dark blue stripe going from the right shoulder to the left hip.
The shirts, which sported the royal coat of arms on them, are said to have been presented to the club following Prince Albert Victor's visit to Turf Moor in October 1886 for their friendly against Bolton Wanderers (who later that season wore a kit with a sash themselves). It was the first time in history that a member of the British royal family visited a football ground.
'Sashes have a long history as markers of status, allegiance, and authority,' Professor Groves says. 'Worn across the body, usually from shoulder to hip and over the heart, they carry immediate symbolic weight.
'They date back at least to the 17th century in European military and ceremonial dress, where officers wore them in national or regimental colours to denote rank. Monarchs, nobility and chivalric orders used them in formal regalia and by the 18th and 19th centuries, they had spread to fraternal organisations like the Freemasons and the Orange Order. Sashes also featured in civic and state ceremonies.
'In the 20th century, their use expanded into beauty pageants, ceremonial roles and protest movements, functioning as a visible declaration of identity, honour or cause. The sash's visual form relates to heraldry. In medieval Europe, coats of arms often featured a diagonal stripe called a bend: a clear, recognisable symbol on a shield. Heraldry emerged in the 12th century to identify individuals in battle or tournaments using consistent colours and motifs. It became a hereditary system of signalling lineage and allegiance.'
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The north west of England's connection to the sash does not stop with Burnley and Bolton — it predates them. Before Burnley's royal seal of approval, Everton, whose home kits are now royal blue, can claim to be one of the first football clubs in the world to have used a sash motif. In 1881, an all-black home shirt with a red stripe running through it earned the team, then known as St. Domingo FC, the nickname 'The Black Watch' given its similarity to that specific regiment of the British Army.
In 2021, 140 years after the original 'Black Watch' strip had been worn, a version of it returned to Goodison Park when Danish kit manufacturers Hummel took inspiration from the 1881-82 shirt for the 2021-22 away jersey, which featured a burnt orange sash. The orange colour was preferred to red, given it would have drawn close comparisons to fierce rivals Liverpool.
This upcoming Premier League season will see the return of the sash when Manchester City turn out in their new home kits made by Puma. It is the first time the club will wear a sash on their regular-season home shirts after club legends like Colin Bell iconically wore single-stripe away shirts back in the 1970s, the same decade in which Crystal Palace debuted their own well-known versions.
The reason for the increase in the production of sash kits in the 1970s was down to advances in technology. 'The advent of sublimation printing on polyester kits in 1970s made such designs much easier and more affordable to produce,' Professor Groves explains.
It is not known where City first took the inspiration for the sash from — they have also had a number of sashed alternative strips in the last 30 years — but coincidentally, they hosted River Plate, whose shirt and crest both traditionally feature a red sash, at Maine Road for a friendly in 1952.
The four-time Copa Libertadores and 38-time Argentinian champions themselves have put the sash on the map. They first repped it in 1905 through to 1910, briefly abandoned it in favour of striped shirts, then made a return to the sash they are now synonymous with in 1930, and they have barely looked back.
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There are multiple theories when it comes to the origin story of River Plate's sash. One version says they took inspiration from carnival floats, another says they used the sash to distinguish themselves from other teams, and another says it was a nod to Genoa, Italy, where many people settled in Buenos Aires from, with some involved in the club.
Peru are also known for the red sash, which they first wore circa 1935. In 1936, they competed at the Olympics in Berlin, Germany, wearing the famous red and white from which they get their La Blanquirroja (the white and red) nickname.
The diagonal stripe has been used by countless teams around the world and was even adopted by next summer's joint men's World Cup hosts, the United States. According to James Brown, vice president at the Society for American Soccer History (fittingly abbreviated to S.A.S.H), the U.S. men's national team first wore a striped kit at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. They also wore a sash when famously beating England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil and repeated the design ahead of their rematch at the 2010 tournament in South Africa.
Landing on definitive stories as to why certain teams began to wear a sash kit is not straightforward. Take La Liga side Rayo Vallecano, who introduced a red sash into their kit designs from 1949.
'Word on the street is that it was a tribute to River Plate,' says Paul Reidy, an Irish journalist living in Madrid, where Rayo are based. 'But a lot of people say that's not actually true. The big River Plate team with (Alfredo) Di Stefano, called La Machina (the machine), were doing their thing in the 1940s and they came to Europe in the 1950s. By then, Rayo were already playing with the diagonal sash.
'The other theory is that Atletico Madrid said: 'You need to incorporate some red in your kit because we're helping you out'. A historian called Juan Jimenez Mancha writes in his book, The Origins of Rayo Vallecano, that there's no paper trail that takes you back to the time to know precisely.
'The romantic thing is that it is in homage to the great River Plate team of the 40s. I like that story but I'm not sure how true it is.'
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