In September, British label Labrum London became the first-ever brand to stage a fashion show at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium. Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice walked the show alongside presenter Clara Amfo and rapper Ghetts. Players Riccardo Calafiori and Myles Lewis-Skelly watched from the pitch side, among the company of the fashion crowd and celebrities including presenter Reggie Yates, actor Micheal Ward and footballer-turned-broadcaster Eniola Aluko.
Arsenal is, of course, not the only club exploring fashion. Designer Kenny Annan-Jonathan was appointed as creative lead at Crystal Palace last year, while Rhude founder Rhuigi Villaseñor was announced chief brand officer at Italy’s Como 1907 just last month. In 2021, Off-White signed a long-term partnership with AC Milan. “I went to Ib Kamara’s talk [about the collaboration] at Milan Fashion Week,” says Anna Ross, global head of trend and insight at brand agency Karla Otto. “[The audience] was really quite different to who you’d see at a normal fashion event, I didn’t really recognise anyone in the room. So it definitely brings a new type of consumer.”
Even beyond club tie-ins, fashion brands themselves are leaning into the football aesthetic. Take the ‘blokecore’ trend, for instance, centred around vintage football shirts and scarves. It has led to the selling out of T-shirts, including the Wales Bonner design for Jamaica in 2023, as well as reworked football styles from the likes of Martine Rose, Balenciaga, Marine Serre and Conner Ives.
Unlike other major football clubs, who might ink tailoring partnerships with established luxury brands like Armani (Italy’s national team) or CP Company (Manchester City), Arsenal has aligned with cool, cult brands that boast strong communities. Arsenal’s fashion kudos comes from its players, too. Those on the fashion radar include Rice, who recently wore a double-breasted Prada suit to the London Football Awards; Bukayo Saka, a regular attendee of Burberry shows and star of the Aimé Leon Dore x New Balance campaign; Leah Williamson, who is a Gucci ambassador; and Lotte Wubben-Moy, profiled in the current issue of The Gentlewoman.
Rice in particular is becoming quite the fashion influencer. He, too, starred in an Aimé Leon Dore campaign earlier this year, wearing on-trend boat shoes and a chore jacket. GQ dubbed his style “quietly assured”. This influence is becoming quantifiable. In a report using data from influencer marketing agency Lefty, Karla Otto found that Rice was the fourth most influential athlete across the Spring/Summer 2025 shows after walking Labrum, with a social media engagement rate of 7.71 per cent.
At the start of October, Arsenal also collaborated with British streetwear brand Aries. The launch campaign featured players alongside other Arsenal-supporting talent and was shot by photographer Clare Shilland. The collection played with the history and iconography of the club, featuring a shirt printed with the Art Deco columns of its original home ground Highbury, which it relocated from in May 2006, as well as canons on stickers and a baby tee reading “J’adoro Arsenal”. Days after the collection landed, at the Arsenal vs Southampton game, the slogan tee could be spotted across the crowd, a sign that fans are straying away from the Stone Island and The North Face getups typically seen on football terraces.
It was, says Aries CEO Nikki Bidder, the most successful collaboration the brand has ever put out. “The most expensive item in the collection sold the quickest for both brands — the wool varsity jacket,” she says. Arsenal reports that at the peak of demand, the club was taking an Aries order every two-and-a-half seconds. “I think, longer term, we will definitely see [continued] conversion into our world,” says Bidder. “There’s been brand education and storytelling, and that’s a part of the end goal.”
Holly Gilbertson, managing partner at sports and fashion trend forecasting agency Pacer, sees Arsenal’s foray into fashion as a long-time coming. “Arsenal have been a steezy club for many years — since [players] Freddie Ljungberg and [Thierry] Henry,” she says. “In the 2010s, they [Arsenal] were teased by rival fans for being rubbish on the football pitch, but were merchandising massively. They’re very much the ones laughing now, because they were so far ahead in terms of navigating this more culturally fluid world of football.”
Connecting to fans via fashion
Arsenal implemented a new marketing strategy in 2021 to spotlight fan culture and align with brands that represent its fan network, says Arsenal marketing director Adam Gardiner. Fashion has become a key way to connect. Labrum designer Foday Dumbuya is an Arsenal fan, while Aries, a North London brand with Arsenal fans on its design team, plays knowingly with familiar club symbols. “There’s something for them and of them, and they see themselves reflected in our creativity,” says Gardiner.
This season, Dumbuya became the first fashion designer to design a shirt worn by players of a Premier League team. The away kit — a black shirt with zigzag detailing and red and green accents — is a tribute to Arsenal’s strong African fan base, and was created in partnership with Arsenal kit sponsor Adidas.
“Adidas used a fabric called aeroready that gives the player 360 movement,” Dumbuya says. “I thought, ‘It [the kit] has to be about how people move and how Africans got to live in this part of the world.’ The zigzag that you see is derived from African masks.”
Gardiner says that it’s the authenticity of Dumbuya’s work, as a Sierra Leonean designer who often spotlights African culture, that made it resonate with the football fan base. “Striving to be first can feel quite superficial at times,” he says. “It’s all about authenticity. Our insight tells us that’s what our supporters want.”
“People want the shirt even if they’re not Arsenal fans,” Dumbuya confirms. “They’re saying, ‘It means Africa, it celebrates us.’”
Sometimes, reaching out to fans is all about ‘if you know, you know’ marketing. Arsenal’s Aries collaboration featured Clive Palmer, host of the popular ‘Arsenal Vision’ podcast, alongside players and up-and-coming musicians. “That was definitely something that Arsenal was looking at — as Easter egg elements,” Bidder says.
Scoring brand reach and conversion
An association with Arsenal — even if unofficial — can boost a brand’s profile. Take Antonia Bronze, a young designer who creates custom-made leather jackets, for example. She designed a jacket for Tolami Benson, influencer and partner of Arsenal right winger Saka, to wear to the Euros over the summer. Images of Benson went viral, and Bronze quickly saw an uptick in requests for her work; she has since made jackets for various other women in the Arsenal circle, as well as fans-come-influencers including Chloe Burrows and Saffron Barker. “I want to do stuff that’s not fast paced,” says Bronze. “For me, it’s been life changing in the sense that I’m able to do the projects I want to do. I’ve not had to reach out to a single client since this all started.”
Arsenal has been instrumental in the rise of women’s football, too, with all women’s matches this season due to be played at the 60,000-capacity Emirates ground — a first for the Women’s Super League. A recent report compiled by Visa predicts the commercial value of the women’s game to increase sixfold over the next decade, and Pacer’s Gilbertson sees Arsenal’s investment as savvy. “The shift in recoding what football is and who it’s for is super important in terms of cracking open [women’s football] potential for fashion brands,” she says, pointing in particular to the LGBTIQA+ part of the fan base. “I play football with a lot of queer women, and the Aries collaboration was blowing up the Whatsapp group,” she says. “It’s a brand that has style credibility with streetwear-adjacent followers but it’s also very resonant within sapphic culture in London.”
For brands, working with a football club with 126.5 million followers across social platforms no doubt appeals. The reach is significant: Lefty data reveals that Labrum’s earned media value (EMV) grew by 997 per cent following the Emirates show, making it the fastest-growing brand at London Fashion Week. (EMV is the equivalent advertising spend to achieve the same number of impressions.)
For the club, working with brands like Labrum appeals to their fans — but beyond them, too. “Collaborations like these open up us and our partners to new audiences with different, intersectional interests,” says Gardiner. “We know there’s a huge global audience who crave that sense of belonging to Arsenal, and brands like Adidas and now Labrum and Aries have done such a good job in appealing to different supporters and serving them with style choices.”
Dumbuya, meanwhile, has seen an undeniable impact; thanks to the Arsenal kit, he’s become something of a celebrity. “People come up to me on the train,” he says. “Everywhere I go, everyone is wearing the kit, even at [Notting Hill] Carnival. My friends were teasing me saying, ‘Oh, you’re famous now.’”
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