Footballer Fits: The online community celebrating the players’ wild style

It would be an understatement to say 2020 was a year filled with fear and mayhem, but in the midst of all the chaos, shoots of creativity still managed to spring up. Football and fashion fanatic (and former Argos worker) Jordan Clarke was among those sewing the seeds for what would become a bonafide enterprise, founding @footballersfits – a space where the two polar opposites of fashion and football could collide. 

“I noticed there was no backing of football players [when it came to fashion] and no platform for them to express themselves on,” Clarke explains. If it wasn’t Paul Pogba getting slandered by sports pundits and football fans for his audacious blonde dye job, it’d be Alex Iwobi coming under scrutiny for wanting to explore the music field. As early as his teen years, Clarke remembers being obsessed with documenting footballers’ style, setting up a Facebook page which he later sold (though only for £250, which he regrets now).

Later came his Instagram and TikTok accounts, which between them have amassed over 2 million followers. On each platform, Clarke spotlights the players he thinks are doing fashion well, with a series of footballers, including Arsenal forward Reiss Nelson, applauding him for creating a space which shifted focus away from negative headlines and celebrated their fashion identity beyond the pitch. 

Now, as well as posting fit pics, Clarke also jets around the world and facilitates studio shoots and interviews with international players – and all this with no degree or previous experience in business or media. And fashion is finally paying attention: brands including Bottega Veneta, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton have all finally come around to understand the influence these sportsmen and women hold beyond the fashion scene – in recent years, everyone from Marcus Rashford and Son Heung-min to Leah Williamson have been tapped up by names as diverse as Burberry and Martine Rose to star in campaigns and take on ambassadorships. 

Here, as Footballer Fits approaches its five-year anniversary, we talk to Clarke about the changing landscape of football culture, challenging the ideology that athletes are one dimensional, and the importance of encouraging players to leverage off of their status in football and evolve off the field.

Hey Jordan! What sparked your initial interest in football and fashion?

Jordan Clarke: I’ve always been a football fan but I think during COVID, everyone got into fashion and the different aspects of it as all you could do was buy things online. I’ve had years of experience managing football fan pages, but I knew if I pushed solely fashion to strictly football fans, it probably wasn’t going to grow as much.

When did you realise there was a gap missing between the two worlds?

Jordan Clarke: I was inspired by the American culture surrounding the NBA and NFL and the way their athletes are celebrated. I noticed footballers didn’t receive the same backing as there was no platform for their self expression. We obviously had [Héctor] Bellerín and [David] Beckham, but aside from that there wasn’t a whole host of players getting involved in fashion because of the fear of being criticised if they posted their outfit.

Football’s a very traditional sport and, not to generalise, but the older heads of the football scene are not always the most confident, self-expressive people themselves because their generation didn’t encourage self-expression, so they’d more than likely look down on it. FF was born to be that platform to stand up for players and give them an avenue and route for their self-expression.

“A lot of the time, you’d see shoots with footballers where you can tell they don’t really want to wear what they’re wearing” – Jordan Clarke

When did you start noticing a stronger desire from FF fans wanting editorial-focused content?

Jordan Clarke:  A lot of the time, you’d see shoots with footballers where you can tell they don’t really want to wear what they’re wearing, the interviews would only focus on football, results and their next transfer moves. No one was really asking them their favourite brand – all the questions our young audience wanted to know. I came up with the ‘Unfiltered’ series where we go to their house, let them style themselves and we’d do really low key shoots which let them come out of their skin, because there’s no ‘lights, camera, action.’

How do you think the Gen-Z audience have responded to footballers launching their own clothing brand?

Jordan Clarke: I think the difference between this generation and the younger one is that they’re much more open to it as they’ve grown up with social media, so they encourage it. The majority of them want to see ballers make music, they want to see the fashion side, otherwise FF wouldn’t have gotten as big as it has.

Do you believe footballers should leverage off of their football status to explore different creative avenues?

Jordan Clarke: To solely rely on football when you’re not sure how long or far it will take you might not be the best decision, so I’d always encourage players to seek different creative fields – whether they’re playing professionally or not, especially if they have the freedom to do so as they don’t have to do a 9-5.

Now that there’s the market for it, if you make enough noise about what you’re doing and you have the platform and football following, people are going to hear you, and Footballer Fits will embrace it.

How is Footballer Fits pushing for personal styles off the pitch more than on?

Jordan Clarke: Two years ago, no one was talking about what players were wearing to training, most people think that’s not even a discussion, but when we started collaborating with Crystal Palace on tunnel fits, their engagement went completely higher from that point because there was the fashion element. We’ve since collaborated with Tottenham Hotspur and Nottingham Forest. We also have an exciting partnership with Harvey Nichols where we invited two ballers to shop around the department store and set an outfit challenge.

You’ve also featured some female footballers’ fits on FF. Have they been receiving the same attention, from a male-dominated audience?

Jordan Clarke: When I first started I was wary of the reception, but some of the female players can get miles better engagement than the men’s. We’ve featured Leah Williamson and Lauren James and I think the balance with us is that we need the women to be dressed in streetwear to appear on FF so the majority of our audience can relate to it.

One of my favourite things about this platform is that everyone’s celebrated. Every single post is positive about that player, so I think that’s one of my proudest achievements in terms of the community we’ve got. If a footballer gets a notification ‘you’ve been tagged by FF’ you’re not going to be thinking ‘oh no.’ It’s a moment where they can get excited.

Style wise, name 3 footballers who should be on Dazed’s radar?

Jordan Clarke: Jules Koundé from Barcelona, definitely the best dressed in the game right now, although not everyone likes his fits as he’s not playing it safe. He comes in cropped, oversized pieces. Rafael Leão from Milan is an interesting character, he has a whole different career in terms of the typical footballer’s journey as he models a lot of the times as well. Finally, Memphis Depay – I’d call him the Drake of football in terms of his lifestyle and fashion choices, he’s got that upper-class style.