Throughout this spring of 2020 health crisis, with the cessation of all official competitions, football fans were condemned to devour match replays, more or less vintage, broadcast on specialized channels or on the web.
A little Proust madeleine for football fans who like to immerse themselves in the sporting exploits of their favorite players of yesteryear. If on the field, the outfit of these modern-day heroes has not fundamentally evolved from a stylistic point of view with the essential triptych “jersey, shorts and cleats”, apart from the “meadow”, the dress -code of these idols, has for its part experienced multiple (re)volutions. Review of details.
Never without my “jogging” (1976-1998)
Footballer Jean-Pierre Papin in April 1992 in Aix-en-Provence. (Photo Pool APESTEGUY/SAMPERS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Before 1998
(Photo by Stephen Munday/Allsport/Getty Images)
Since 1976 and the epic of the “Greens”, the Saint-Etienne team in the European Cup, football has fascinated the French, but footballers are not yet passionate about fashion... If a few originals sometimes allow themselves a slightly eccentric haircut, few of them venture onto the slippery slopes of the designer shops.
An exception which proves the rule, Eric Cantona left his blue jogging pants to parade for Paco Rabanne in 1993.
(Photo by William STEVENS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
In the world of high-level sport, stylistic ostentation is not yet the norm. The wide-cut tracksuits feature a three-stripe logo
In terms of materials, we oscillate between the legendary “peach skin” and fluorescent nylon. We were still far from current technical clothing.
Very “casual” world champions (1998-2006)
Zidane is having his measurements taken not for tailor-made jeans, but for the making of his wax statue. (Photo by Fernando Camino/Cover/Getty Images)
September 1, 1998, slight change of style. The President of the Republic at the time, Jacques Chirac, awarded the Legion of Honor to the 22 players making up the victorious team. At the Elysée, the entire team wears the same outfit like a uniform: a gray suit
In 1998, the world champion French team was received at the Elysée. (Photo by Jacques Langevin/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)
France then discovered new popular heroes. Untouchable icons on the field, our Blues still maintain an accessible image close to people, as evidenced by the very casual style of Zinedine Zidane, Laurent Blanc and Fabien Barthez. The ordinary of the extraordinary in short.
Laurent Blanc and Fabien Barthez, with Flavio Briatore, boss of the Renault F1 team, in Monaco in June 2001 (Photo by Alain BENAINOUS/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Our players do not indulge in eccentricity. If on the pitch, Aimé Jacquet's team shines brightly in its azure Adidas jacket, which paid 9 million euros to be a partner of the team, outside, it is time for sobriety.
Faded Levi's 501 jeans, shirt tucked into pants or plain t-shirt, light sweater on the shoulders, Marcel Desailly, Bixente Lizarazu or even play it classic, sober and relaxed. At this time, in 2001, the latter began to pose for Dries Van Notten and Paul Smith.
Bixente Lizarazu, here in 2004. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Bongarts/Getty Images)
In the process, the goalkeeper of the Blues, Fabien Barthez, begins to flirt with the top model Eva Evangelista on the fashion beaches of Saint-Tropez: the era of “bling-bling” among our footballers is underway!
The “bling-bling” era (2006-2018)
(Photo by Ray Tamarra/Getty Images)
The coming decade marks a real turning point in the appearance of these stadium gods. Lulled from the training center by Hip-Hop culture, the kings of football seize the dress codes of their idols with silver microphones and never hesitate to overdo it, like Djibril Cissé who changes your look every workout. The latter multiplies his hair attempts, going from platinum blonde to fluorescent green between two matches.
In January 2020, he will even parade for Jean-Paul Gaultier.
Shining gold chains, collector's sneakers, baggy pants and US sports caps screwed on their heads, our tricolor flagships no longer hesitate to embody the bling-bling style that would make rapper 50 Cent look like a majorette.
Von Dutch and Ed Hardy, brands from the galaxy of French designer Christian Audigier, are popular with our players. Of which you have a preview of the creations just below.
A Christian Audigier fashion show in March 2007. (Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images)
Lack of luck, the sporting performances on the field are the opposite of their clothing styles: far from brilliant! So much so that after a strike led by Patrice Evra, in the middle of the first round of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, his teammate Nicolas Anelka took off on the first plane to Roissy.
For the occasion, dressed all in black, he appears at the airport with a hooded sweatshirt and smoked sunglasses that would almost make him look like Darth Vader's cousin.
Footballers = fashion icons (2018-2020)
After this somewhat agitated period, punctuated by an ugly clash between Benzema and Valbuena concerning a dark sex-tape affair, a return to calm! In 2018, if the codes of Hip-Hop culture reign more than ever in the world of football business, our new world champions have become true fashion icons who proudly occupy the front rows of the capital's fashion weeks.
Neymar Jr., Kevin Trapp and David Beckham attended the Louis Vuitton Fall Winter 2018-2019 Paris fashion show (Photo by Bertrand Rindoff Petroff/Getty Images)
Twenty years after their first coronation, it is Nike's turn to break the bank and pay 43 million euros to equip our Blues on the pitch, instead of Adidas. A true social phenomenon, Kylian Mbappé takes particular care with his sense of elegance, the spectrum of which varies depending on the occasion from streetwear to costume.
(Photo by Michael Regan - FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)
In his dashing twenties, the Bondy native is the darling of the entire Instagram generation who carefully scrutinizes every detail of his looks in his stories. In the “civilian”, the star striker of the Blues walks along Avenue Montaigne as a neighbor to find his outfits.
Under a sponsorship contract with the famous brand with the Oregon comma, the crack is equally fond of Balenciaga's streetwear outfits during his trips to César, the fashionable restaurant in the 8th arrondissement of Paris.
Another luxury ready-to-wear brand very popular with our footballers (including Kyky): Philipp Plein! The German brand arouses a real passion for the entire sphere evolving in the world of football. Aware that he is much more than a footballer, Kylian Mbappé never hesitates to put on a very sober tailor-made suit for major ceremonies.
“Footballers are becoming sortable again”
To dig a little deeper into what's behind these looks, we went to interview Vincent Grégoire, director of the Consumer Trends and Prospects Department at the Nelly Rodi trends firm.
The look of footballers has radically evolved over the past four decades, how do you interpret these changes?
First of all, there is a before and after 1998! Before the French team's victory in the World Cup, footballers walked around only in tracksuits offered by their equipment manufacturers. In 1998, we witnessed the birth of a real team spirit, the famous France “Black-Blanc-Beur” was very homogeneous in terms of look and then a new generation arrived…
What are the clothing characteristics of this new generation?
This new “post-98” generation was younger, more immature. We have entered head-on into a veritable cult of personality. The players felt constrained by the outfits imposed by their clubs which did not allow their identification on the pitch.
They therefore opted for very “original” haircuts and multiple visible tattoos. It was also at this time that the wave of “footballers’ wives” appeared, real fashion “accessories” for them. They really had an assumed bad-ass side which displeased public opinion, like Franck Ribéry or Karim Benzema who posted photos on social networks of themselves gobbling up steaks with foil. overpriced gold in Dubai...
What is the situation today and what will be their trends tomorrow?
Under the leadership of a player like Kylian Mbappé, footballers are becoming “sortable” again. Of course, they still worship luxury brands like Dolce&Gabbana or expensive streetwear brands like DSquared but they are also becoming “new nerds”.
They invest in publicized charity works and develop their own series with their equipment manufacturers. Players have become more than just coat racks, they want to instill new values, they are becoming almost organic.
