On Sunday afternoon, beneath the smoke bombers and chants of a stadium, a silent fashion show also takes place. Weathered bomber jackets, embroidered patches on the left arm, white leather sneakers illuminated by the spotlights, caps perched on heads like tribal crowns. Bravo fashion —that set of aesthetic codes born in the stands of organized fan groups—has left the stands and spilled into the city streets, overwhelming the urban wardrobe. And in the same way, metropolitan streetwear has made inroads into the ranks of the ultras, in a constant exchange of influences. Today, strolling downtown, we can recognize echoes of the style of the most ardent fans; and in the stands, among flags and banners, we glimpse details that reek of global street culture. How did this mutual contamination arise? We have to start from afar, when the two worlds began to mirror each other.
It all began in England, between the 1970s and 1980s, on the terraces of British stadiums. At that time, violence between fans was at its peak, and the police had developed the habit of identifying and arresting anyone wearing the colors of their favorite team. The fans' response was ingenious: to avoid security, they began leaving their official scarves and jerseys at home, showing up at matches dressed "like ordinary people" – jeans, Ben Sherman sweaters, Fred Perry polo shirts – that is, with the innocuous appearance of the middle class. Thus was born the casuals subculture, summed up in the striking motto “dress well, behave badly” – dress well, behave badly The fans reject their fan uniforms and adopt an unsuspecting elegance, almost as if they wanted to cheat the system. But behind those sweaters and clean loafers, the rebellious attitude remains intact: the Saturday brawl hasn't subsided, it's just that they're now wearing a nice suit.
This aesthetic shift, initially pragmatic, soon became a statement . Dressing well soon meant dressing in designer clothes. When English teams began playing European cups across the Channel, hordes of young away fans took advantage of fashion capitals like Milan and Paris to raid luxury clothing. They returned to Liverpool or Manchester laden with style trophies stolen abroad : Italian technical jackets, unobtainable trainers, sportswear never seen before in their homeland. Brands like CP Company , Stone Island , Fila , Ellesse , Sergio Tacchini , and Diadora —until then simply clothing brands—suddenly became symbols of a subculture , status symbols to be proudly displayed on the streets of England. Whoever wore them sent a clear message: I am an ultra, but with style .
A symbolic episode of this contamination dates back to the 1984 European Cup final, Roma-Liverpool. That evening, thousands of English fans peacefully invaded the Eternal City. It is said that, wandering the Roman streets before the match, some of them were fascinated by a detail on the arms of certain Giallorossi supporters: a woolen patch with a compass rose sewn onto the left sleeve. It was the trademark of Stone Island, a young Italian brand founded by Massimo Osti just two years earlier. The Liverpudlians returned home with those strange jackets and, after winning the cup, spread the word on the island: it was absolutely necessary to have the compass jacket . As soon as it landed on English soil, Stone Island spread at breakneck speed in the stadiums: it became the banner of casual culture, on a par with Fred Perry polo shirts or Lyle & Scott sweaters, a true heraldic emblem of that lifestyle halfway between dandyism and violence. In cult films about hooliganism like Green Street or The Football Factory , it's no coincidence that the jacket with the clearly visible yellow-green patch on the arm always stands out. Towards the end of the 80s, entering an English stadium meant finding yourself surrounded by a sea of Stone Island jackets , Umbro or Burberry sweatshirts and above all Adidas trainers : it was impossible not to spot legendary models like the Gazelle or the Samba on the feet of the boys. Strictly immaculate. In casualwear jargon, it was called "only white shoes": an unwritten rule, shared like a stylistic code of honor.
These codes, born across the Channel, quickly spread throughout Europe, even captivating the Italian fans . In the early 1990s, even in our stadiums, small groups of fans began to be seen dressed "casual": out with scarves and flags, in place of designer jackets and trendy sneakers. Yet, in Italy the process had its own nuances. As Antonella Mignogna – costume designer for the film Ultras – recounted, in the early 1990s in Naples, fans adopted a personal, almost Panini-like style, more spontaneous and less uniform than their English colleagues. Only later did a rigorous and uniform ultras dress code establish itself in Italy, too. The fact is that within a decade, the attire born on the terraces went from being a tribal sign of recognition to a true fashion phenomenon . The media and music also had their share of credit: in the 1990s, British bands like Oasis , or even the Stone Roses before them, began dressing on stage exactly like fans at the pub, cementing the casual look in the pop culture imagination. Britpop drew heavily on that subculture of track jackets, Adidas trainers, and logo baseball caps, bringing it from the streets to music videos. Suddenly, the fans' rebellious aesthetic was everywhere: no longer just a stadium thing, but an urban style recognized and imitated even by those who knew little or nothing about football.
Almost without realizing it, we've reached the point where high fashion is looking to curves for inspiration. A few years ago, Versace's runways in Milan featured football fans' scarves paired with luxury dresses (Fall/Winter 2018 collection), and Dolce & Gabbana paid homage to Maradona with a couture t-shirt, parading through the streets of Naples. It meant that the Sunday wardrobe at the stadium – bomber jackets, scarves, oversized jerseys – had also conquered mainstream luxury. Two key figures of the recent zeitgeist , Georgian Demna Gvasalia (creative director of Vetements and Balenciaga) and Russian Gosha Rubchinskiy , have been able to take those aesthetic codes and legitimize them at a high level , reinterpreting them in a fashion key. Rubchinskiy, in particular, entered into a surprising collaboration with Adidas Football between 2017 and 2018. For three seasons, he launched hybrid collections, mixing technical sweatshirts and jackets inspired by fan apparel with contemporary design elements. The stated idea was to connect the sportswear and streetwear consumer , uniting them with "simple" yet nostalgic objects, like a team scarf or a player's jersey. Around the same time, Nike also made its move, bringing its most iconic symbol—Jordan's Jumpman —to the jerseys of a top European club, Paris Saint-Germain. Since 2018, the partnership between PSG and Jordan Brand has inaugurated an ambitious fashion line, combining technical sports excellence with high-end urban style , marking an unprecedented cultural alliance between American basketball and European football. Seeing Michael Jordan's logo on a football uniform has become normal: once it would have been unthinkable, today it's a sign of the times. Collaborations between clubs, sports brands, and fashion houses are multiplying: capsule collections, lifestyle lines, and vintage reissues are bringing the language of football out of the stadium and into boutiques. Historic jerseys are back in fashion, training shoes are transformed into street sneakers, and rain jackets designed for the bench become sought-after streetwear pieces. The crossover is complete, from retro football to futuristic.
But the flow is not one-way. While the fashion world draws heavily from the ultras aesthetic, the same thing happens the other way around: the street returns aesthetic codes to the stadiums , closing the circle. Today, in the stands, we see young fans adopting looks that owe much to global street culture. If in the 1980s, the ultra type wore almost exclusively "stadium" brands, now we also see items born in entirely different contexts in the stadiums: a Supreme sweatshirt, a pair of ultra-technological Nike Air Max , or even an Off-White camouflage jacket. The new generations of supporters are also children of the internet age and hype; they experience the city and the stadium as a continuum, and express this in their wardrobe. In certain European stadiums, it has become common to show up in all-black , with an entire group dressed in black from head to toe, perhaps with matching The North Face jackets: this communicates a compact unity and immediate visual power. This trend of technical black – far removed from the festive polychrome of traditional fandom – comes directly from streetwear and urban outdoor wear, and has been embraced by younger ultras for its visual impact (and the convenience of remaining anonymous in the event of a "battle"). On the other hand, casual fashion remains for many a bastion of identity to be defended: some, disappointed by the commercialization of their fetish brands, have reacted by relaunching exclusivity as a value. Longtime fans, for example, are reluctant to tolerate their beloved compass logo being prominently featured in rap videos or on the social media of American trappers. In England, a segment of the casual scene began to disdain Stone Island once it became too mainstream , to the point of chanting against the brand in stadiums. To keep the underground spirit alive, some brands born from the fans have deliberately chosen to remain niche: no mass production or loud advertising, only limited editions for true connoisseurs. The manifesto of the Italian brand Natural Casual essentially reads like this: " It's not fashion for everyone, and that's exactly why it matters ." Garments without flashy logos, sold in limited quantities, designed by fans for fans – because those who wear them are more looking for a knowing nod at the stadium than a like on Instagram. It's the ultras' response to massification: creating a private aesthetic terrain, understandable only by the tribe, sheltered from the gaze of the uninitiated.
In this cycle of intertwined influences , fashion and football culture continue to chase and reinvent each other. What starts on the terraces of a stadium ends up parading downtown, and the trends that explode in the city find their echo even behind a banner in the stands. It's a fascinating game of mirrors: the oversized bomber jackets, the " terrace " shoes, the peaked caps that once signaled membership in a particular fan base now speak a universal language of contemporary urban style . And at the same time, every new development in streetwear is filtered by the world of ultras, reinterpreted according to its tribal codes and incorporated into the stadium dress code . In short, stadium fashion and streetwear mutually influence each other in a passionate embrace: loyalty to one's own colors goes hand in hand with the desire to express one's personality through clothing. It's proof that football and fashion can coexist and enrich each other, together telling a story that smells as much of asphalt as it does of cut grass, made of cities and stadiums – two worlds that are only apparently distant, but united by an ever-evolving aesthetic dialogue.