As football season charges on into winter, fan talk in the stands often turns to analysis of players’ uniforms: the color combinations, the stripes, the logo placement, whether the throwbacks are ugly. Armchair quarterbacks turn front-row fashion critics, tossing opinions around like pigskins on all-black or all-white jerseys, the colors on the facemasks, and who the official apparel sponsor will be next season.
But for the fashion design professionals responsible for outfitting football players, the look of the uniforms is just one play in the game. Freelance graphic designer Emily Baker, a 2004 graduate of The Art Institute of Portland, has worked for nearby Nike and Adidas on sports apparel and uniforms, including Major League Soccer. From fabric technology and retail strategy, to city identity and typography, Baker says uniform designers take into account many details before putting athletes in the finished product.
“A lot of thought is given to making the team as comfortable as possible, and to creating a more comfortable, better piece of equipment,” says Baker, who will begin teaching at her alma mater as an adjunct faculty member in January.
Position of Football Uniform Fashion
At the professional level, a player’s position may affect the fit and the silhouette of uniform design, Baker says. Today’s football players typically prefer tighter-fitting fabrics that make it more difficult for opposing teammates to grab their jerseys, she says. Notable exceptions are the quarterbacks, some of whom prefer a looser fit for more freedom of movement in the throwing arm. The personal fit preference of a team’s star player may influence the decision of his teammates for what uniform silhouette to wear, she says.
When replicating football jerseys to sell in retail stores, manufacturers typically offer fans a lower-tier replica and a higher-priced authentic jersey identical to the ones worn by the pros that usually costs a few hundred dollars, Baker says. Designers will sometimes include a hidden detail – a special patch at the hem or custom stitching at the neckline – for the pro teams to wear on game day.
“A lot of it is keeping true to the team’s identity, and what the uniform was before it arrived on the desk of the designer,” Baker says. “You also want to highlight the new technologies of the brand you’re representing.”
Uniform manufacturers like Nike, Reebok, and Adidas incorporate the most cutting-edge textile technology when designing for football players at the professional and collegiate levels, Baker says. Today’s teams wear bacteria-resistant fabric, for instance, which is developed either by using naturally occurring materials like bamboo, or by enhancing the fabric with antimicrobial treatments. Another example of football-friendly fabric is Coldblack, Baker says, a black fabric that repels sunlight and in turn regulates body temperature on scorching playing fields.
Youth Football Uniforms
Advanced fabric technology comes into play for the youngest football players, too. Allen Sportswear, an Orlando-based custom uniform provider, uses steel mesh for the football teams it outfits, which range from peewee to college and semi-pro leagues across the United States. The company’s senior sales representative, Robert Fazioli, says that durability is especially important for high-school players, who order one uniform built to last for four years.
“Every year, players get bigger, faster, stronger, so the uniforms need to keep up with that,” Fazioli says. “All of our fabrics are stress tested, where the machines pull the fabric to find their burst strength.”
Rounding out the jersey design are the spandex side panels, which make the mesh fabric flex when pulled and retains a form-fitting shape at the same time, Fazioli says. Even the stitching on football uniforms has been upgraded in recent years to be more lightweight and more durable.
The form-fitting uniform silhouette has evolved from the 1990s trend of cut-off jerseys that hit at the stomach, Fazioli says. Before that, the oldest football uniforms were baggy, with extra fabric that hung over the pads.
Football Uniforms Inspire More Than Fear
These days, teams can express their team identity by getting creative with color, lettering, logo placement, and stripe design, Fazioli says.
“Kids ask for what the college or pro teams are wearing,” Fazioli says, adding that custom details can be incorporated into every element of football uniforms nowadays. “You’ll see the colleges set the trends and the youth players follow them.”
For example, youth and high school teams will request fonts for lettering and numbering and will specifically reference certain college or pro teams, Fazioli says. Whether they feature an outrageous mascot design, twisting side panels, camouflage lettering details, or dazzle fabric, one-of-a-kind team uniforms can play out as a psychological maneuver as powerful as pride in the team colors.
High school, college, and semi-pro teams will order two jersey designs, Fazioli says, one for home games and one for away games. He cites college teams that plan for a black-out game night, where the players wear a special occasion, or alternate, all-black uniform and the fans coordinate with all-black clothing.
“When you’re confident and you have the fan base behind you, you’re going to be excited about how you look and how you play,” he says.