The rise of the £900 football shirt

Football shirts have escaped the stadium terraces and broken into mainstream fashion. Recent years have seen Kendrick Lamar collaborate with Martine Rose on a collection of striped football jerseys, Dua Lipa pose in an AC Milan-inspired shirt, Sabrina Carpenter perform at Wembley in an England kit, and all before Euros mania hit in summer 2024. “We did a pop-up in New York and a super-cool woman ended up buying a Blackburn Rovers away shirt in fluorescent-yellow from 2002,” says Josh Warwick, co-owner of Swindon-based seller Cult Kits. “You think ‘this is weird’, but this shirt was cool.”

With fans and the fashion-conscious both looking for classic shirts, demand is on the up. “It’s been a steady rise since we started in 2010,” says Tomas Jones, founder of Wrexham-based Vintage Football Shirts. “It’s only over the past 10 years or so that the kits people remember from their formative years have been available to find and buy,” says Warwick. “With the rate at which clubs change kits now, I think fans would prefer to invest in something timeless.” 

The holy grail is the ’88 Holland shirt

For those starting out, the rubric is simple: the more storied the season, the more collectable the kit. “If a team wins a trophy, that helps demand down the line,” says Tomas Jones. Warwick has fond memories of a white-collared Ipswich Town away shirt from 1992, the season the team won promotion to the newly established Premier League. “At the end of the season the club would sell off match-worn shirts for £7, and I bought this long-sleeved Umbro away shirt,” he recalls. A short-sleeved version can now be found on Classic Football Shirts for £70.

1991-93 Arsenal away shirt, £425,
vintagefootballshirts.com

1997-99 Newcastle United  home shirt, £350, vintagefootball shirts.com

That said, a dud season can be rescued by a brilliant design. “Arsenal were crap in 1991-1993 – they got knocked out of the FA Cup by Wrexham – and yet the ’91-’93 away shirt, known as the ‘bruised banana’, has become an incredibly valuable collector’s item,” says Warwick of the yellow design, which is decorated with chocolate-brown chevrons. “Shirts either have to be associated with a good period, or weird.” Vintage Football Shirts has a mint-condition “bruised banana” shirt on sale for £425.

The most-wanted shirts result when kit design and game success align. “The collectors’ holy grail is Holland ’88,” says Jones of the geometric-patterned, almost luminescent orange shirt. “They won the Euros in it and the design by Adidas is just iconic. You’d probably be paying £900 for one now.” West Germany’s World Cup-winning 1990 Adidas home shirt was such a design classic, with its angular red, black and yellow swoop across the chest, that Germany’s 2018 World Cup T-shirt paid tribute to it. Cult Kits has a 1990 Germany home shirt for £300.

For the hardcore collector it is, of course, a matter of allegiance. My dream find is Reebok’s 2004-2006 Liverpool home kit, in which Steven Gerrard lifted the Champions League trophy in 2005 and the FA Cup in 2006. Signed, framed examples are available from around £270 from specialist seller A1 Sporting Memorabilia. 

Walthamstow FC home shirt, £55

2018 Nigeria home shirt, £150, cultkits.com

Collectors looking at contemporary shirts with an eye on the future should seek out limited-edition kits. “A lot of clubs now release kits in collaboration with fashion brands, such as Juventus with Palace,” says Warwick. The collaboration pairs Juventus’s black and white stripes with the optical-illusion graphics and lurid fluorescent logos often associated with Palace. “There’s interesting stuff going on with smaller clubs. Kappa has produced beautiful kits for Venezia in the past few years, and because of the size of the club there won’t be loads of them. Think about kits that might be considered iconic in years to come.” For a modern classic that will look good whether worn or wall-mounted, look no further than Walthamstow FC. Its Admiral shirts are emblazoned with the William Morris “Yare” pattern, in collaboration with William Morris Gallery, and a percentage of the sales will go to establish a new women’s team.

The booming of vintage kits brings risks, as official replicas and sophisticated fakes enter the market. “Always go to a trusted retailer because the quality of fakes has increased significantly,” warns Warwick. “Be very wary if you’re going on eBay or Vinted to look for a shirt.” Cult Kits authenticates its shirts carefully to be sure everything on sale is the genuine article. Yet Charlie Holder of Brilliant Corner Shop, which organises vintage apparel drops on Instagram and pop-ups in London pubs, embraces the inauthentic. “I’m looking for vintage bootlegs,” he says. “The notion of unofficial shirts is really evocative. There’d be a summer where you’d wonder, ‘what’s the new kit going to be?’ So you had these designers making guesses of what they thought kits would be like.”

For style inspiration, Holder points to players like AC Milan legend Paolo Maldini, who wore his shorts high and tucked his shirt in. “That era of Italian footballers were so stylish. They wore the kit with such panache.”