Jerseys: blokecore or brokecore?

Stripped of football loyalty, a jersey is reduced to strips of polyester panelling.

Athleisure. Often used as a means of ‘dressing down’ an outfit, athletic wear comes in various shapes and sizes. New Balance 550s (or 530s, if you’re a feeling a bit “old school”), Nike ACG — the enduring textiles of All Conditions Gear — Juicy Couture tracksuits, but none come quite so close to the level of capitalist iconography featured on a soccer jersey, or — as would be more authentic to its cultural roots — a football kit.

This piece will not merely dissect the origins and trends of blokecore as much as it will discuss the broader use of jerseys to undercut, reappropriate, and subvert the shallow aesthetic of a trend such as “blokecore”. For those willing and curious about observing the trend cycle, the rise in jerseys is inextricably linked to TikTok — that app where users share their outfit of the day, thrift finds, original kits, replicas, and create edits that draw from an aesthetic of a different era, area or subculture. While the trend may have been led by fashionistas with a vicious support for their soccer — sorry — football team, the piece has gone beyond the realms of vicious sports loyalty — particularly for a game like football — and entered one disconnected from sports entirely.

Stripped of football loyalty, a jersey is reduced to strips of polyester panelling – likely colourful – and becomes a mere canvas for the names of teams, players, sponsorships, slogans, and logos. The football jersey has made its rounds in the high fashion world: In 2014, Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto designed the Third Kit for Real Madrid, featuring iconic branding of dragon and bird imagery. We’ve seen the soccer jersey be repurposed as band merchandise: Black Midi released an exclusive run of ‘BLACK MIDI BLACK COUNTRY NEW ROAD SPORTS JERSEY’ for their Back in Black US Tour in 2022 and Nia Archives also released a ‘Baiana’ football jersey and scarf as a part of their latest merch drop.

Kicking forward with the football resurgence, independent designers such as FERAL (@f_3_r_a_l) and pinupgirl (@pinupgir1) adopt and rework the jersey into a garment stripped of genuine football loyalty. Instead, logos and icons traditionally present on a jersey are replaced with graphics, crests, and text that allude to the commercial aesthetic but truly just exist for aesthetic — poking some fun. 

Designer Henry Johnson (@henry_jawnson) takes it a step further and repurposes the commercial aesthetic of the soccer jersey to commentate on capitalism, market concentration, and monopolisation. In May 2022, Johnson released a mock-up of jerseys satirically clad with BlackRock, Exxon, Raytheon, minions, and miscellaneous fantastical backgrounds, titled ‘Post apocalyptic hell world mock-ups’. The mockups pose a blatant comment on the ethics and decline of economy in a society plagued with doom of imminent climate crisis and war where ironic acknowledgement becomes a coping mechanism and tool of resignation. Grim.

The football jersey can be mapped with a clear trajectory — beginning as an indicator and identifier of a player in a game, and then an earnest expression of loyalty and passion for a team. In the case of FERAL, the jersey is a means of adopting a loose ‘bloke aesthetic’ where the sport itself becomes irrelevant to the aesthetic, or in Johnson’s case, a medium brimming with possibilities of criticism, commentary, and awareness.