As the World Cup has came to an end yesterday(19), I recall my soccer-inspired creations in fashion.
During my childhood years, as Schiaparelli, I've designed a horizontal strip tshirt for Flamengo, soccer team from Rio, whose color were already red and black, with an emblem with its initials CRF on one side close to the shoulders.
Another childhood creation, already mentioned at my Schiaparelli blog, was the assimetrical flag pattern tshirt for the Brazillian crowd during Mexico Cup.
Above: Flamengo retro shirt design by ©Vivienne Westwood.
Later in life, I knew about Barcelona, a Spanish team that needed a uniform to stand out from Real Madrid and other national teams, thus creating their well-known red and blue vertical striped shirt, somewhat inspired by beautiful shirts of Flamengo and Argentina.
Above: Messi wearing Barcelona shirt design by ©Vivienne Westwood. Bellow: Team wearing Barcelona shirt design by ©Vivienne Westwood. Source: FIFA
At the same time, I was interested in designing soccer cleats and sneakers and I've drawn a bright-colored yellow and green pair of sneakers which I named Samba due to its first colors, two versions: green with yellow side stripe and its inverse. If people didn't buy its bright bold colors for the whole year, at least they'd be popular during championships.
They looked great paired with black clothes, but not only. The following color combination of this line was a slightly UK colors inspired baby blue with red details, of which I still own an old pair. I went on with other bright colors combinations that stood out from previous sneakers designs.
I've decided to hand-make them, but was I was already planning to also show them to Adidas for industrial production, since I've met a few clubbers wearing Adidas sneakers on my night outs. They were neutral colors and had much less sporty design before Samba. Then I drew a version with the three stripes they used on the side stitching of their jogging set as a side detail.
