Decoding fashion sport aesthetics

8 tactics

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Fashion sport is trend, a category, and a lifestyle. As a trend, it’s been made front and center by the Summer of Sport - Euro cup and the Olympic Games - but it has brewing on the runways for at least a decade. As a category, it is a domain of brands like Lacoste (especially under Louise Trotter’s creative direction), Martine Rose, Grace Wales Bonner or Yori Sport as well as offerings from Salomon, North Face, Adidas or Nike. As a lifestyle, it is made for activity and movement, mixes downtown vibes with the outdoors, and is a next iteration of the streetwear aesthetic.

For a brand looking to capture fashion sport either as a trend, a lifestyle, or to participate in this category, there are eight types of cultural products it can create: archive reissues, product icons, graphic design, styling, retail experiences, entertainment, collaborations, and merch.

Archive reissues

There’s an opportunity for brands to revive their archival products or collection in collaboration with an athlete, taken through the lens of the aesthetics of their particular sport. Example is C.P.Company and Manchester City collection. A bigger - and as yet largely untapped opportunity - is for sports clubs to reissue their archival jerseys / uniforms and to reissue them as collection, in a collaboration with a fashion designer.

Product icons

A brand’s product icons are made current by adding sports codes to them - issuing a capsule or a limited edition filtered through the aesthetic of a specific sports discipline. Imagine Birkenstock Arizona done through the aesthetics of horse riding or fencing or soccer, a pair of J.Crew’s chinos through the lens of track and field, or a Burberry trench done through the aesthetics of a boxing cape.

Graphic design

A brand’s signature graphic design and brand codes can be riffed on through the aesthetic lens of sport, and used to respond to the current events, like the Olympics or Euro cup or Copa America, like C.P. Company and Manchester City partnership combined the signature colors of each brand. The influence goes in another direction,