Our starting point was simple enough: what do we actually want to wear? Not just on matchday. Not just when it feels like an occasion worth dressing for. But in the day-to-day living of a football-flecked life. What do we actually need?
So, this collection is foundational in the way good things tend to be. Less about the jersey as a standalone statement (“Isn’t crazy that I’m wearing a football shirt to work?”) and more about a full range of menswear that happens to have football running through its DNA. You don’t need to show. Those that know will know.
Think of this collection as a Saturday night vibe that can do a sensible shift on Monday morning, too. The sartorial equivalent of Zanetti or Gullit — players who did it all, gave everything, and got properly thanked for it only once they were gone, and a gaping great chasm opened up in the middle of the park in their stead.
And while we’re talking about timeless utility men, our references matured, too. Now we’re pulling from tiles, interiors, cafés; from players and managers of earlier generations (the nineties isn’t the only reference point worth pulling, lads) and people and culture around the game as much as on it. There’s a graphic language here that doesn't announce itself — dare we say: a bit more subtle, a little more grownup — and just sits there, considered, and rewarding of a closer look.
Speaking of consideration: It’s time you got yourself a “modular wardrobe”. Not of the IKEA-furniture-broke-up-my-relationship sort. Nor even that obsessive, anxious way you’ll see on Instagram — the relentless grid of outfits that all coordinate a little too perfectly, begging for someone to get them to touch a smidgen of grass — but in the way a good team plays. Everyone knows why they’re there and what they’re for.
It’s not unlike Brendan Rodgers’ fabled 2012/13 Swansea team, really: something that adds to more than the sum of its parts. (Nathan Dyer, you will always be famous). A system lets you grab almost any combination and somehow it just works. Trousers that run across everything. Jackets that pull a look together without trying. Knits that do some heavy lifting and then settle into the rest of your wardrobe like they’ve always been there.
We’ve looked to build this collection around experiences. Not only worn while getting heatstroke at a festival or as your wend your way up and down the calf-destroying undulations of Lisbon’s cobbles streets, but the sort of thing you might wear to, say, Peckham’s Eko Brewery for a World Cup game in a room full of people. Where you’re not so much dressed for the occasion as you are happy to fit into a stylish crowd of likeminds. The composed utility man in a timeless outfit.
These are clothes for getting to the game, for standing around before, for heading somewhere after. Or for not going to a match at all and wearing them anyway. Because football is about so much more than the ninety, isn’t it? And it’s always important to keep that in mind.
Futsol SS26 collection, launching this Thursday, 14.05.26.
