Kidsuper’s Williamsburg studio looks like a high street in a children’s picture book: painted a rich pastel blue, the exterior features a series of storefronts, including a laundromat, a ‘Kidsuper market’ and a public library. Inside, the space is thronged with a crowd of intimidatingly cool and good-looking New Yorkers, sipping on Jameson’s cocktails, and many of them decked out in football shirts. We are gathered here on a blustery Tuesday evening to watch the streetwear designer (real name Colm Dillane) face off against Colombian musical superstar J Balvin in a game of five-a-side, taking place on the studio’s rooftop pitch and screened in real-time below. 

Just over a month ahead of the FIFA World Cup 2026, the event celebrates a new collaboration between Dillane and Jameson whiskey: an eight-piece capsule collection, Bottled by Kidsuper, featuring a tracksuit, soccer jerseys, caps, and more. This in turn forms part of a larger campaign, It’s What You Bring, which will see Jameson celebrate football culture throughout the year, including the recent launch of a short film starring Blavin and Dillane, and directed by celebrated filmmaker Nabil. At first glance, the capsule collection seems like an unlikely match-up: Jameson, launched in 1780, is one of the world’s most historic and storied whiskey brands, a beloved staple of the oldest of old man pubs, while KidSuper’s aesthetic leans towards the colourful and hyper-modern. But one thing that unites them both is a shared connection to Irish culture. 

While creating the collection, Dillane - whose father is Irish – travelled to Ireland to visit Jameson’s Midtown distillery, its offices, and its archives, where he was joined by members of his family. “I’m seen as very Irish here, and then when I go back to Ireland, I’m seen as a dumb Yank!” he says. “This collaboration helped me to reconnect with my Irish side – not that I wasn’t connected to it, but I got to learn a lot more, visit different parts of the country, visit different pubs and go through all these old books.”

As well as having his Irish heritage as a touchstone, Dillane is a long-time football fan who played in college and at one point even tried to go pro. Nowadays, he and Balvin play together in a team called the Super Ninos, and he tells me, with a kind of pre-match bravado, that he’s the best football player in the fashion world. Football shirts are having a big moment in the US right now, which I’d assumed was due to an increase in the sport’s popularity – “soccer”, as they insist on calling it, has recently overtaken baseball as the US’s third most popular sport, first-time fan engagement has spiked 400 per cent and the US is of course co-hosting the FIFA World Cup later in the year. 

But as Dillane sees it, the soccer boom is only a part of the story. “I think [the popularity of soccer shirts] is because there's kind of a British Renaissance happening right now, across music, art and fashion,” he says. “In the US, when we listened to British rap, we used to think, ‘wow, these accents are so stupid’. And now it's become like, 'oh, this is actually cool'”. He points to a growing appreciation of grime stalwarts like Skepta, rappers like Central Cee, and a new generation of UK UG artists, including EsDeeKid, who are currently blowing up stateside. “They influenced American style, once people started taking notice, and obviously British style is very associated with sport.” That musical influence, rather than the sport itself, is the biggest reason for the US embrace of the soccer shirt, he suggests. Earlier in the day, I’d visited Classic Football shirts, a store in Downtown Manhattan which has already achieved cult status since its opening in 2014, and found them blasting a soundtrack of grime and UK hip-hop.

This distinction explains why many Americans aren’t tied to wearing shirts based on the team they support, or whether they support a particular team at all. It doesn’t matter if you’re passionate about Dortmund FC or Algeria, say, as long as you like the design. This may seem sacrilegious from the perspective of a hardcore British football fan, but it allows for a purer kind of aesthetic appreciation; football shirts aren’t just a symbol of fan allegiance,  for some people at least, but a garment in their own right. Their explosion in popularity seems to be down to a mixture of more people in the US getting really into football and people who simply look cool – and that’s valid!

While the influence of British music is a more ground-up phenomenon, football is making its presence felt in the higher-end of fashion too – take Martine Rose, Willy Chavarria or Simone Rocha, whose recent LFW collaboration with adidas drew heavily on football culture, or brands like Balenciaga, Aries and Moncler, who have all worked with major football teams in recent years. The 2026 World Cup has already brought a wide array of new fashion collaborations (some of which we listed on Dazed yesterday), and Colm himself has a busy year ahead. His commitments include a forthcoming Bape collab, which will spotlight each of the 48 countries participating in the tournament, from Uzbekistan to Scotland.

The five-a-side match is a close call, but Dillane‘s team ultimately triumphs. After a game of ‘top bins’, where players have to kick the ball through a fiendishly small gap in the goal, everyone piles upstairs to party on the rooftop pitch. As we gear up for the World Cup, the event is a reminder that music and fashion are a large part of what makes football culture such an endlessly fertile terrain.