Why Are Your Favorite Designers Making Football Boots?
From Louis Vuitton to Wales Bonner, the beautiful game is everyone’s footwear inspiration right now.
When the term “blokecore” entered the public lexicon in 2022, most people thought it would be a passing micro-trend that died down in a matter of months, as most of them tend to do. The sudden obsession with vintage jerseys and tracksuits, match scarves and other memorabilia surrounding the beautiful game was optimally timed just before that year’s World Cup, creating a global frenzy the sport hadn’t seen since the days of Posh and Becks.
Suddenly, every brand was making soccer-inspired clothing, drawing from “the lads” and their primal obsession and passion for their respective clubs. How that obsession manifests in fashion has always been up to interpretation, and now more than ever, designers and brands are making soccer their first language.
Blokecore didn’t die down. Instead, it spiraled into something greater than the TikTok influencers that coined the term. No longer a trend, it now a part of the culture to the point where the average person can pull a pair of old football boots out of their closet and wear them to run errands without anyone batting an eye. Insert: your favorite luxury brand.
The fashion industry is known for preying on the trends that blow up on social media, reimagining them in premium fabrics and reselling them to you for triple the price. Since the rise of blokecore, nearly every major fashion house and designer has made their own version of a football kit — the easiest entry point into the wondrous world of joga bonito.
A much harder aspect of the beautiful game to regurgitate in lambskin and logos has always been the footwear. Yes, Louis Vuitton under Pharrell Williams has embraced the sport wholeheartedly, releasing the popular Footprint Soccer Sneaker in late 2024. However, lifestyle hybrids and remakes have mainly been initiated by the sportswear brands that introduced the styles to the world in the first place, working with designers like Priya Ahluwalia and Rihanna to bring the fashionable side of football to life.
The luxury football boot is an anomaly in the sport, lying somewhere between a collectible and a utilitarian item. Luxury brands have no choice but to go through the original manufacturers to create an item that everybody wants, yet barely anybody has the guts to wear. They sit in temperature-controlled rooms and wait in pristine boxes, slowly becoming the grails children will boast about their parents owning. Despite the museum-like glorification of these designs, we are seeing more and more of them every season. But where did it all begin?
The first high-profile designer football boot collaboration came 20 years ago in the buildup to the 2006 World Cup in Germany. A pivotal year for the sport in terms of fashion and culture, Yohji Yamamoto left his mark on the heavily-referenced tournament with an animalistic twist. The adidas Y-3 +F50 Tunit “Beast” pack took one of the brand’s classic silhouettes and transformed it into a range of wild animals. Tigers, wolves, eagles and even dragons made their on-pitch debuts that year thanks to Yamamoto. The boots were bold and unlike anything the sport had ever seen before. Most importantly, it set off one of the best trends in the game.
Since ‘06, designer football boot collaborations were few and far between. Virgil Abloh’s Off-White designed a Mercurial Vapor in collaboration with Nike back in 2018, bringing both brands’ signature orange to the forefront for one of the most highly coveted releases of the 2010s. Apart from that, the idea of a luxury boot was still a foreign concept — a once in a blue moon event — until 2023.
What happened in 2023, you ask? The biggest shift in the sport’s fashion culture since the early 2000s. Adidas and Prada’s Linea Rossa boot line was an underrated causeway into this current era of footy. The three-piece collection gave adidas’ boots a chic, streamlined look, leaning into Prada’s more minimalistic design codes with the Prada Sport red stripe — a far cry from the bright colors and crazy patterns people tend to associate with football boots.
Less than a year after the eruption of blokecore, that was one of the first times football felt truly fashionable, and since that drop, every brand has joined in on the party. Adidas has leaned into its new role as trendsetter, releasing major collaborations with Wales Bonner and BAPE — two drops that are much too beautiful to ever step foot on a muddy, waterlogged pitch.
The Three Stripes aren’t the only ones bringing fashion to their studs, though. Stone Island and New Balance’s ongoing partnership has developed some of the most beautiful on-pitch collaborations, working alongside Dave and Arsenal star Bukayo Saka. At PUMA, KidSuper is keeping the brand’s designs fresh, even designing Christian Pulisic’s signature boots for this year’s World Cup.
With this summer’s tournament bringing the best out of every brand, Nike was never going to miss out on the opportunity to bring its biggest collaborators into the fold. A special-edition boot release with Patta launched in May, but that was only the start of the brand’s major summer of soccer.
For its biggest federations, the Swoosh launched the X2 collections, working with Jacquemus, Palace, Patta and more to create complete lifestyle collections for the players and fans alike. Each collection included a pair of Cryoshot sneakers, remixing Nike’s classic football boots into entirely new designs for one of the most fashion-forward World Cups ever.
Between 2006 and now, so much has changed, albeit in a short period of time. Is blokecore to thank — or blame, depending on how you look at it — for style suddenly being on equal footing with performance? Possibly, but the shift was always going to happen eventually. Nowadays, we can expect at least two pairs of luxury boots a season, when in the past you might have been lucky to see that in half a decade.
Some brands are naturally aligned with the sport and could potentially be next on a growing list of designers helping us lace up on a matchday. Daniel Lee’s Burberry brings sport and football in particular to the forefront of its campaigns and runway presentations time and time again. Adidas is rumored to be linking up with Louis Vuitton this year for the ultimate collaboration. Whether the rumors are true or not is yet to be seen, but with the whole world building its style around the stadium, expect more blockbuster collaborations in the future.
