27 h.
The Guide #251: From Oasis to Harry Styles, music is mad for football merch
In this week’s newsletter: After a slow burn for many years, the football shirt has crossed over into the world of music fandom in a big waySomething sartorially strange is happening at gigs across the country. Where once there might have been a sea of (often black) cotton T-shirts across the audience, now a note of heavy polyester has been added to the mix. Last month at Outbreak, the UK’s biggest hardcore punk festival, a sizeable minority of attendees were wearing football shirts – though often not in support of any particular team. Instead, in place of club crests and sponsor logos were names of bands at the festival – Fiddlehead, Alexisonfire, Love is Noise – or for the festival itself.This isn’t a phenomenon restricted to the hardcore scene. On the tube in London, a day after returning from Outbreak, I saw a gaggle of Harry Styles fans returning from one of his Wembley shows, all sporting bright pink football kits with the One Direction man’s name in place of the shirt number. Pr...