Football Meets Fashion: 5 Fashion Brands And Their Exclusive FIFA World Cup 2018 Collections
After four long years of waiting, one of the largest global sporting events is finally back again. The FIFA World Cup is not just for the national football aficionados to go crazy when their country scores, but rather an event that’s being watched over by everyone around the world. This, in the marketing sense, means a perfect opportunity for brands to get their products out for the entire planet to see. That is why businesses have been active of the late, rolling out advertisements with celebrity endorsements and releasing new “Limited-Edition” collections with all their partnering brands.
It’s probably safe to say that even before the first match whistle was blown, almost everyone had already joined in on the global festivity of the FIFA World Cup Russia 2018, especially the fashion industry. Today, we bring you the exclusive World Cup fashion collections from 5 global brands made especially for the football fans around the world.
'47
’47 is a lifestyle brand from the United States, well-known among the head-wear enthusiast community. Their exclusive World Cup cap collection called “The Football Gods” was inspired by the football stars around the globe who have brought the names of their respective countries to the forefront of the footballing world.
This collection features a re-design of the all-time favorite model the brand Clean Up. Each cap represents each country through the color from each nation’s kit. The right side bears the nation’s flag, and the back showcases the number of times each country has won the World Cup through a number of stars. The words “The Football Gods” are sewn onto the front, but for popular World Cup countries with larger fan bases, the words are replaced by the country’s name. This applies to Spain, Brazil, France, Uruguay, Italy, Belgium, and a few more top teams. Each cap goes for $25 or around 820 THB.
Nike
Nike scored big time and won over both the fashion industry and the soccer fans worldwide with the Nigerian national team kit as the “2018 Nigeria Stadium Home” jersey (priced at $90 or 2,950 THB) amassed over 3 million total orders even before its official release. The design took inspiration from the team nickname “Super Eagles”, resulting in the black-white eagle wings pattern on the sleeves and an abstract green-white feather pattern on the body. The striped pattern within the feathered wings design was influenced by Nigeria’s national football kit in 1994, the first year they qualified for the World Cup. Nike also released other exciting items in the collection including fanny packs, bucket hats, soccer boots, and many more.
That's not all. Nike collaborated with designer Virgil Abloh, founder of street-wear brand "Off-White" and a real football fan, for a Nike x Off-White collection called "Football, Mon Amour". They re-designed the iconic Mercurial cleats by adding two dots on the inside and outside of the boots to indicate the ideal contact spot for kicking the ball. Abloh also brought in his signature "comma" as he often did with his own brand. The black-white checkered football jersey took inspiration from the Croatia team jersey, white the lion logo with orange-blue dots was influenced by the Netherlands national team emblem. He added a personal touch with the jersey number he used to wear himself back when he played football. All other items in this collection use the black-white-orange color tone and feature his play on letters with all kinds of fonts that fit together perfectly.
Bape
Popular Japanese street-wear brand “Bape” decided to join in on the fun and released the “Bape Football Collection” that consists of only 2 items, a soccer ball, and t-shirts.
The soccer ball features red-blue camouflage patterns and the words “Apes Together Strong 1993-2018” written in gold color, while the tees come in a total of 2 designs and 2 colors: black and white. One design features a Bape head that uses the same camouflage color and pattern, while the other uses the brand’s graphic logo from 1993 with the words “World Gone Mad” and “Ape Shall Never Kill Ape” written at the back. The t-shirts go for 6,800 Yen or 2,030 THB a piece, and the soccer ball goes for 8,800 Yen or 2,650 THB.
Louis Vuitton
After joining hands with FIFA to design the casing for the prized World Cup trophy in 2010, Louis Vuitton is back again this year unveiling a collection of leather bags under the name “Louis Vuitton 2018 FIFA World Cup”.
This exclusive collection consists of 7 different items including tags, pocket organizers, “Apollo” backpacks, “Pochette Jour GM” bags, “Brazza” and “Slender” wallets, and “Keepall” suitcases. The hexagonal patterns take inspiration from the official soccer ball used in the World Cup in 1970 take used the iconic leather from the brand “Epi”. You can use the color of your favorite nation’s flag for the “Keepall” suitcases and customize the bag tags into the flags of all 32 nations that qualified for the tournament and 3 other nations as well. The bags come in 3 main colors: black, blue, and red, and goes for $325-4,300 or 10,700-141,500 THB a piece.
Adidas Football
Other than the national football team kits they take part in creating on the regular, this year, Adidas Football had also collaborated with top Russian fashion designer Gosha Rubchinskiy to produce a special football collection in celebration of the country’s historic debut as the World Cup host.
The collaboration unveiled an array of co-branded jerseys, shorts, socks, boots, graphic sweaters representing the Russian cities hosting matches, and a soccer ball in a special Rubchinskiy colorway. Some selected apparels feature the word ‘football’ woven in Cyrillic, the standard script for Slavic languages, and the boots are a Russian flag-inspired re-design of the Predator 18+ cleats. Also, the football shirts feature cities like Sochi, Moscow, San Petersburg and Kaliningrad, numbered in a 4-5-1 game formation with Russia as playing field.
As the World Cup is underway, keep in mind that this kind of festivity only happens once every four years. Sometimes, the best way to get into the spirit, other than cheer your minds out in front of the TV screen, is to get hold of these limited-edition items and gear yourselves up ahead of every match. There might be better ways to get your head into the game, but we think the “Sold Out” labels put on all the retail websites after only two days of release makes a strong case for all these exclusive collections.