Not Sarong After All

The National Football Museum's Strike A Pose exhibition proves footballers can create great entertainment in other industries. Well, some of them can.

Having a week off work has, oddly, made me more productive. That and seeing a former schoolmate living in Australia as a designer anyway. So last week I decided enough was enough. I was done (for now) with marathon lazing sessions in bed watching TED talks on my mobile and eating croissants with jam. Erm:- not the croissants with jam, then.

My first step away from my safety blanket (which really is my bed, ironically) was a baby one. I decided to visit the National Football Museum here in Manchester, which has been part of the city's cultural makeup for the last three years at the Urbis. Which itself is a beautiful piece of work and well worth staring at, particularly on the fine day I got.

As well as many good friends that are my intellectual superiors, my Twitter feed is populated by comedians and football journalists from various media. In my mind's eye the role of the football journalist is a glorious one; Michael Cox's coffee-fuelled dissections of dummy runs and wing counterattacks which probably involve copious Excel somehow, Raf Honigstein's witty rendering of the whinging that's somehow juvenile and intelligent between Uli Hoeness, Jupp Heynckes and Jurgen Klopp, and "the Sunday column" (my prefs: Daniel Taylor and Henry Winter); this last one assumes almost institutional status in my Sunday morning routine and stands as the ultimate bulwark against internet journalism, a form invariably devoid of statistics (read: evidence) and usually as interesting as a Tony Pulis formation.

Any fan will tell you there's a visceral, near-tangible sensation of group thought that's at its most powerful in football, but it's deeply evident in fashion too. I've seen at first hand how trends, new seasons and the famous four cities that make the worlds' fashion weeks inspire people to discuss, debate and commentate on something that feels theirs. It's a wonderful feeling and it doesn't surprise me to find many people in football are therefore very interested in fashion as well.

The Strike A Pose collection at the museum is testament to a lasting cultural relationship between fashion and football and it was easily the best part of what I felt was a brilliant monument to the sport. Whilst few would argue it possesses the depth and history of more established cultural forebears, football shares a powerfully nostalgic quality prevalent in the best art and music, and in fashion it has a partner passionate about re-evaluating history and revising its most interesting elements.



Hello boys. Who's that second from right?

Everything was in there, from Mourinho's chic grey cashmere coat (above) to the (in)famous 'cricket flannels' Armani suits Liverpool wore to the 1996 League Cup final (right). But the most interesting collections for me were George Best's clothes from his fashion line and an evaluation of fan fashion from the 1970s onwards. 

Best would have thrown La Nausee in the Seine; he was a man who lived, never passive in anything and for that reason destined to burn out before the finishing line. For that reason a lot of descriptive English doesn't really apply to Best and never will; he was never ethereal in presence or aloof in attitude. Typically the clothes he designed embodied that life and were an uncompromisingly contemporary and stylish statement, in comparison to the staid postwar suits of Bertie Mee's Arsenal side in the 1960s. Best's collection possessed a floridity and vibrance that lazy people would term 'quintessential';- I prefer to think he just liked mustard turtlenecks.

It was also great to look at fan fashion objectively, without the sinister inferences found in Nick Lowe films and Jeff Powell columns, and see how and why it developed. I particularly loved the more 'tailor-made' stuff that was directly responded to its environment; Massimo Osti's goggled mac (left) is an inspired bit of outerwear that's both practical and infers that a statement's being made.

And of course, the UK's relationship with the national sport meant the afternoon represented a chance to snuffle around a conscience perpetually tearing itself apart over everything before generally making the right call. Except for those Liverpool suits of course. Just look at the state of Neil Ruddock.

Liverpool team photo courtesy of Liverpool Echo