When heritage sport labels and style merge, the result are simple streetwear dopeness. U.K.-based streetwear aficionado Neal Heard, author of Trainers (2003) and A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts (2015), recently launched a capsule collection of soccer jersey’s with a conceptual football club association simply called Lover’s F.C.
To find out more about the inspiration behind the collection, we had a quick exchange with Neal Heard you can check out below.
Snobette: Where does your affinity for soccer jerseys come from?
N.Heard: “Well I’ll have to give away how old I am to answer this one! I was one of the original ’80s Casuals, a fashion movement which basically sort of pre-dated the current obsession with high-end brands and sportswear by about 30 years. The fashion movement was unique; unlike most fashion tribes the Casuals were linked to football not music. Strangely, the last thing a football Casual did, was wear the shirt of their own team, but I took a liking to shirt design back then.”
Snobette: What prompted the creation of Lover’s jerseys?
N. Heard: “My background is in fashion, but I also love football. I had previously written a book called Trainers and just recently written a book on football shirts [A Lover’s Guide to Football Shirts] so I thought there was room to develop and explore football shirts more from a fashion and design and streetwear sense of the scene. Taking the cue from my book’s title, and also wishing to explain how I and us, the masses, love shirts and design, Lover’s F.C just seemed a logical progression to capture and explain where I was coming from.”
N. Heard: My previous collaboration was with the fashion label You Must Create [Y.M.C.] and so it was great and an honor to see the jersey on the catwalk at fall 2017 London Fashion week. We took the idea of a football team called Lover’s F.C., but Y.M.C. designed the shirt and became the sponsor.Further exploring and celebrating the development of soccer jersey as street style, we are next teaming up with kings of the sportswear and luxe-inspired garms scene, Dukes Cupboard, to produce a new jersey inspired and in homage to ’80s and ’90s-era American sportswear.This will drop around October when we will have a launch party in the Greens Court Store in Londons Soho, you heard it hear first.
Get updates on Lover’s F.C. on @loversf.c .
