9 hours ago
First football, now Fifa wants to be a global fashion brand
F orget this season's kit, with your favourite player's number on the back and a sponsor's logo splashed across the front; Fifa is heading for Paris Fashion Week. Yes, the tastemakers of, erm, football's governing body are behind a new clothing line.
FIFA 1904, so named for the year Fifa was founded, celebrates the heritage of an organisation with its own Netflix documentary — although that focused more on the 24-year run of corruption in the organisation that ended in whistleblowing and FBI arrests. FIFA 1904 is being designed by the ex-Fenty design director Marcus Clayton and will be shown during Paris's menswear shows this month.
The nexus between fashion and football is expanding and these days the world's biggest stars parlay their international profiles into lucrative sponsorship deals with fashion houses, including David Beckham modelling undies on billboards for Hugo Boss and Emporio Armani, Spain's Héctor Bellerin on the Louis Vuitton catwalk and America's Megan Rapinoe for Loewe. Last September, Arsenal's Declan Rice walked the Labrum catwalk during London Fashion Week at the Emirates Stadium, where Rice usually plays as a midfielder.
