• Sporting Fashion

    In the nineteen eighties footballers shorts were really short. For female fans who fancied looking at a footballerֳ legs it was a good time to watch the game. There was plenty of flesh on show.

    By contrast in the nineteen thirties the shorts were not that short but actually quite long. It was amazing that the players of that time did not trip over them and injure themselves. The physios of the day were probably at the ready with their first aid kits ready for another injury caused by the playerֳ shorts.

    Fashions change and sportswear fashion is no different. It is also now very big business. Walk across any town centre on a bustling Saturday afternoon and a significant percentage of the grown men you walk past will be wearing football shirts. It used to be that only kids wore soccer kits.

    The Jantzen swimsuit

    Swimwear these days is sleek and attractive. It tends to made from nylon or polyester. Essentially it is lightweight so that you can swim comfortably and have no fear that the clothes you are wearing will make you significantly heavier.

    The fashionable swimsuit of the nineteen twenties and thirties was made by a company called Jantzen. It was made of wool. The sort of wool that which absorbed ten times its weight in water. The extra effort needed when swimming in such a suit must have caused knee problems and people probably left the baths wearing ligament knee supports.

    Yet they were incredibly popular and in 1932 Jantzen was the seventh best known trademark in the world. They were the Nike of their day.

    Changing values and fashions

    Fashions are linked to the values that a society has at the time. For instance, in the nineteenth century female bathers at the seaside would be covered up completely. Indeed, it was thought that women should not swim at all as it was bad for their health.

    As times changed so did the fashion and members of both sexes started to reveal more of their bodies as they frolicked in the sea. Nowadays we are not so hung up about how much of our bodies we put on show.

    Football kits and fashion

    Football kits also reflect the fashion of the times. Not just in the length of the shorts but in the colours and styles that teams choose.

    You wonder when you see some kits if the designer was colour blind. Away kits are usually luminous yellow and the crowd need cold packs for their eyes because the players are so bright. Sometimes home teams donִ need to turn the floodlights on because the opposition light up the stadium.

    Famously, Manchester United once blamed their grey away kit for a bad first half because they said they could not see each other. They changed at half time but still lost the game.

    The shirt that was voted the worst of all time was Coventryֳ 1978 chocolate brown away kit with cream piping. But then the nineteen seventies was the decade that fashion forgot.

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