Set Pieces - Dedicated Followers of Fashion
Author: TANGODANCER / Date: Monday 27 July 2009
Our resident historian Tangodancer goes all Gok Wan on football supporters' fashion sense down the ages - or lack of it.
Once upon a time (well, all good stories start with that, don’t they?) back in the dark ages in Bolton, and when the Reebok Stadium was just a rural meadow in Horwich, folk would go to watch football in an amazing array of fashions. Not wanting to conjure up pictures of knights in armour, I’ll start our tale around the 1950s, a time of coal fires, fog, cigarette smoke and the waft of Magee Marshall’s finest ales permeating the air in all directions. A time when big black gamps (umbrellas) were a regular sight on the Burnden embankment and under the dripping eaves of the Manny Road stand. A time when the world still had seasons and folk could experience pre-rigor-mortis just by standing for two hours. It is a pure fabrication that whippets ever attended football matches, as they would have been trodden to death in the rush to get to the pubs or would have frozen to death from inactivity.
The only distinction at the match from a day shopping with the wife, or a pub visit, was the blue and white woollen scarf of the Wanderers faithful. That, a few woollen hats knitted by doting aunties’ for their broods, and a large wooden rattle, furtively concealed beneath the jackets until you reached the Manny Road, were the only indications that match day had arrived. Only eleven people wore a Bolton Wanderers shirt then, and they were all on the pitch under the proud title of 'The Whites'. That then, was supporter wear. Oh, I almost forgot, rosettes!
Football supporting wear consisted of a variety of sartorial elegance, though variety is a bit of a misnomer as long macintoshes, overcoats, wellingtons, flat-caps, trilbies and even the odd bowler hat were the norm. Colours such as funeral black, smoked charcoal, pub-stained tan and niccotine brown were all the rage. A few daring innovators - mainly posh types from all points north of Church Road - actually wore tweed overcoats and - cover your eyes- yellow gloves! Thermal underwear hadn’t yet arrived and vests, shirt, sweater and football socks constituted normal winter match sub-wear. We wore wollen gloves, kids wore Balaclavas to stop their ears from falling off and the trendy youth wore that travesty of style known as the 'dufflecoat', later replaced by its more daring, cut down, dashing cousin made fashionable by local bin-men, the donkey jacket.
Fashions then changed, youth stated to make noises, and the world went modern. Suddenly folk were walking around in car-coats and anoraks, and then, with the force of a Warwick Rimmer volley, the football shirt as an essential fashion item arrived on the scene in the mid 1970s. Clubs started to produce replica shirts for sale to the fans and the days of the sex-show mac, the undertakers overcoat, the flat-cap and the 'Uncle Harry from Eccles' homburg were finally over.
Lest it be thought that everyone walked around in short-sleeves back then, shirts were dragged over a variety of anything that would keep the wearer warm. Global warming would have meant a kid lighting a match under the class circular atlas and the era of Geordie belly flashing would have resulted in an arrest on the grounds of public decency (it probably still should). The football shirt though, was now on view and growing rapidly in popularity.
So the financial departments of the football clubs now had a new source of income to add to the turnstile takings. Football shirts were go. Women adorned themselves in imitation Michelin tyre advert shell-suits and the era of the tracksuit, as anything but what it was meant for, was upon us. Thus began a campaign for the clubs to see just how many times they could screw indecent amounts from the fans by adding away shirts and changing their designs annually. A strange phenomenon also arrived on the scene in the form of shirt designers. This motley collection of said designers, culled from the ranks of junior playschools, the dole and the less stable candidates of hospitals began their task to design the most ridiculous shirts ever known to man. All they needed was a white creation with enough room to fit words like Knight Security, Fred's Fencing, or some such nonsense on the chest and away we went. But it was because the said firms were actually paying us to advertise their products for all to see! Revenue.
Anyway, shirt designing became a career, the Reebok became our spiritual home and the instigators were replaced by professionals hell-bent on success as leaders in the fashion field. Toffee wrapper ribbons replaced the rose and beloved elephant, hoodies replaced everything else and, it now seems, if a paint spill should occur during design, leave it on. If Royal Academy candidates can get away with that as art, why can’t we? In retrospect, and with current results as a bench-mark we might well do better with the mentally challenged hospital inmates or the creative five year olds.
All meant in fun and if you really want to read the history of the football shirt, here it is:
http://www.historicalkits.co.uk/Articles/History.htm
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