With the World Cup around the corner, soccer kits have become a style statement | Canada Voices

Shutting down a street in downtown Los Angeles is a bureaucratic headache of nightmarish proportions. The paperwork, coordination with city officials and fees involved in seeking permission to throw so much as a block party is astounding. Even if you’re a big brand with the resources to pull it off, why endure the hassle?

The answer for Adidas is simple: World Cups don’t happen every day. And when you have a strong presence in a host nation, it makes sense to shut down a tunnel in the third most populous city in North America to hold a star-studded party commemorating your jersey lineup.

On March 19, a few thousand guests – Kendall Jenner, Will Ferrell, Barry Keoghan and Damson Idris among them – gathered at the Lower Grand Tunnel in downtown L.A. for the Three Stripes’ World Cup away kit reveal. The brand transformed the space into a street party, turning an 18-wheeler flatbed into a runway for models to showcase the kits (and later, a stage for rapper Baby Keem).

Across the country, in New York City, Puma hosted its own block party celebrating its World Cup jerseys, spotlighting teams across the MENA region, including Morocco, Egypt and Ghana. Meanwhile, Nike made up for leaving Canada without a new jersey for the 2022 World Cup, unveiling stunning new threads for the national team last week.

Canada will look sharp in World Cup jerseys, but can’t avoid the bigger question

If it all seems like too much fuss over sports jerseys, you may not have been paying attention to the ascent of the soccer kit in fashion. Since the last World Cup in 2022, the fashion industry has embraced soccer style. From the blokecore menswear trend that involves dressing like a lad in a British pub (track jackets, soccer kits, Umbro everything) to innovative brands such as L.A.’s HoodBaby that produce womenswear made from vintage soccer kits, the sport has worked its way into North American style.

It helps that a soccer kit is a good starting point for clothing designers. Jerseys are modelled after traditional T-shirts with added design flourishes such as collars, ribbed sleeve cuffs and athletic textiles. There’s a storied history to pull from as well, with thousands of kits that have established a broad aesthetic to draw from – with more than a century of designs built around big stripes, pinstripes, club crests and bold logos.

In high fashion, the likes of Prada and Martine Rose have gotten in on the fun, applying chic patterns to traditional kit styles, while in streetwear, one would be hard-pressed to find a brand that hasn’t released its take on a soccer shirt (Aimé Leon Dore, Kith and Stüssy being some of the more notable ones).

Fans aren’t just turning to new sources for their soccer fashion fix, either. The vintage kit market has exploded, with U.K.-based retailer Classic Football Shirts reporting sales in excess of 750,000 pre-owned jerseys a year by 2024 and citing the U.S. as its fastest-growing market.

Unlike baseball, basketball and hockey squads, most soccer teams get a fresh jersey every season or two. This means that almost every soccer team in the world has a deep well of beloved designs – exactly the sort of thing a collector community can build around. It’s not just about wearing any Barcelona kit, it’s about wearing the one from the squad’s legendary 2014-15 treble run. Or Liverpool’s iconic Adidas jerseys from the years when appliance manufacturer Candy was the team’s primary sponsor.

The shirts are fashionable, sure, but they’re also conversation starters, sartorial secret handshakes of sorts. There’s a thriving resale market on eBay and Depop, plus a slew of wildly popular retail establishments that specialize in vintage kits such as Saturdays Football and The Football Boutique.

With the ascent of soccer in North America, its influence on fashion feels almost inevitable. In recent years, Lionel Messi and a slate of European stars have come to North America to promote MLS as the next big thing in soccer. Revitalized TV deals have made the sport more accessible, and the stellar 2024 Euro and Copa America tournaments were a thrilling reintroduction to international soccer for the continent ahead of its hosting duties this year.

It’s no surprise, then, that one of the biggest trends right now is a 15-year-old soccer jersey or new World Cup kit styled just the right way. With kickoff around the corner, expect the best fits of the summer to take their cues from the sport.