There was a time when you could pretty easily describe what a football shirt looked like.
Stripes. Hoops. Blocks of colour. A collar. Maybe some pinstripes if things were getting adventurous.
Leyton Orient’s new third kit is definitely not that.
Launched within the iconic walls of Fabric, Orient and Meyba have taken the lights, sounds and underground culture of East London’s nightlife and thrown them across a football shirt.
Cracks, splatters and flashes of colour cover the design, with centralised monochrome badges sitting amongst the madness. Meyba’s distinctive shoulder pattern provides one of the few immediately recognisable pieces of traditional football shirt DNA.
It’s chaotic. It’s unconventional. It looks as comfortable under the lights of a nightclub as it does under floodlights.
Which raises an interesting question.
Are some football shirts now becoming too far removed from what a football shirt traditionally looks like?
There’s clearly a growing crossover between football, streetwear and fashion. Shirts aren’t designed exclusively for 90 minutes on a Saturday anymore. They’re worn to festivals, pubs, clubs and practically everywhere else.
That gives designers considerably more freedom.
Yet does experimentation actually translate into people buying the shirt?
Would Leyton Orient sell more of these than they would a relatively straightforward red, white or black design? Perhaps that’s not even the right measure of success. A shirt like this can generate attention, reach people beyond the existing supporter base and give a club an identity that another conventional design might never achieve.
Then there’s the fact that this is a third kit.
Orient’s home shirt has already delivered the tradition and throwback influence. Why shouldn’t the third be where all the rules disappear?
Perhaps that’s exactly what third kits should be for. The home preserves the identity. The away solves the colour clash. The third becomes the playground.
There will be supporters who wouldn’t dream of wearing something this wild. There’ll probably be others who want it precisely because it doesn’t look like a conventional football shirt.
So how far is too far?
Should a football shirt always look like a football shirt, or is the third kit exactly where clubs should be allowed to completely let loose?
Leyton Orient have certainly chosen the latter.
Credits; @leytonorientfc @meybaofficial @fabriclondonofficial
#leytonorient #meyba #fabric #footballkits #footballfashion #thekitsman
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