The designer wants to turn Crystal Palace into a cultural powerhouse to rival the biggest teams in Europe. Here, he breaks down his abiding love of the underdog and the future of fashion and football
Taken from the summer 2024 issue of Dazed. You can buy a copy of our latest issue here.
Today, you can travel to the other side of the world to a city like São Paulo and find, as I did, someone wearing a Crystal Palace FC jersey from the 1990s in a rave. For Kenny Annan-Jonathan, the revelation isn’t a surprise when I mention it to him on Good Friday morning at an uncharacteristically empty 180 Strand. The 35-year-old design supremo is relaxed, inquisitive and grounded by his family, friends and faith. He has always known how big the Crystal Palace brand is, long before he signed on as the club’s – and the Premier League’s – first creative director last year. “I’ve always been someone who has kind of played in the shadows,” he says. “I definitely liken my journey to what Crystal Palace represents.”
The marrying of fashion and football isn’t just one of convenience, but a logical result of the lines between two major subcultures being erased. Take Aimé Leon Dore’s SS24 campaign directed by Walid Labri, which featured players such as Arsenal’s Declan Rice and Leah Williamson alongside Manchester United legend Rio Ferdinand, photographer Gabriel Moses, fitness collective No Soldiers Left Behind and musician Loyle Carner. The brand has its roots in contemporary New York City culture, where basketball, hip-hop and baseball meet but, ahead of the 2026 World Cup, Leon Dore has recognised the aligning of the gargantuan worlds of football and fashion.
Annan-Jonathan believes in the virtue of providence, things happening as and when they’re supposed to. Since he was a young Palace fan playing in the pens and cages of his local estates, he has been around high-level athletes. And, he observes, there’s a mentality that’s instilled in them from an early age, one that prepares them for a ruthless environment not too dissimilar from being in the army, where life becomes regimented. Annan-Jonathan wants to humanise the stories behind these athletes through his sports marketing agency The Mailroom, which helps place them in front of audiences both conventional and unconventional. He played a pivotal role in getting one of his clients, West Ham forward Michail Antonio, featured in a campaign with Gaffer and Dr Martens alongside Olympic athlete Daryll Neita, where they are shown in scenarios outside of their respective sports.
Football has seen various cultural shifts over the past two decades, particularly in the ways players have been able to speak out and reach fans through social media. “Now players are becoming a lot closer because their stories are being told on their own platforms,” says Annan-Jonathan. “It’s about expression, you know, and like I always say, those flair players that you see right across the ages, it would be absurd to think that they have that much expression on the pitch and not outwardly show that off the page.”
There’s a sense that the storm of excitement and curiosity surrounding Annan-Jonathan’s appointment as creative director has settled somewhat since it was announced last August that he would oversee the club’s apparel designs as well as brand partnerships. “I knew there was a space I could help the club reach through cultural marketing,” he says. It’s an art he’s been honing at The Mailroom, which represents athletes such as boxer Joshua Buatsi, longboarder Marina Correia and former Palace player and south London legend Wilfried Zaha. “The Mailroom is really my form of expression and we work in so many different sports. Sports have so much in them where you can express yourself, [but] football hasn’t always had that off the field,” he says. “For me it’s about representing the underdogs, those people who don’t necessarily have the outlets to express themselves, and then taking them into places where they can do stuff that evokes more emotion.”
Born and raised in Battersea, south London, Annan-Jonathan had experienced what it was like to be underrepresented, unseen and unheard. “When you see a Wilfried Zaha on the pitch, he represents a certain type of person. Do you get what I’m saying?” he explains. “You see them with their chains and before it was just the rappers [that] young people could look at and say, ‘I want what they have.’ Now you can look at footballers and think to yourself that this is something that you could probably aspire to be.” Annan-Jonathan sees much of himself in the athletes he represents, possessing a deep understanding of not only where the athletes come from but also the kinds of young people they inspire.
“I’ve always been someone who has kind of played in the shadows. I definitely liken my journey to what Crystal Palace represents” – Kenny Anaan-Jonathan
He attended Southfields Community College in Wandsworth, a school that has nurtured many professional athletes, including Annan-Jonathan’s client, Michail Antonio. Growing up around the football cages of London is all about creativity and imprinting your own sense of style on the game.
In matters of fashion, though, conformity reigned. “I remember being the first one in my friendship circle to wear jeans back when south London was just grey tracksuits,” he says of his early attempts to define his own style. “South London had its own grip, but just through the elements of TV and music, I was able to create my own [style] through the wider lens of culture.”
In 2007 he created Playdot Apparel, a brand that blends streetwear and immersive artwork, with Kwasi Boateng. These were the early days of contemporary streetwear, when mood and personality were key distinguishers. Annan-Jonathan cites Pharrell, Nigo and Kanye West as formative influences on Playdot, and even the brand’s SKITZ mascot is reminiscent of the BAPE’s Baby Milo and Kanye’s Dropout Bear.
For Annan-Jonathan, starting Playdot kept him out of trouble and provided him with a platform on which his ideas and visions could be created and shared with the world. His core takeaway from the era was the representation of the underdog, a guiding principle that he carries with him today in his role at Crystal Palace. “It’s a Premier League club, so yes, it is a big club,” says Annan-Jonathan, “but at the same time, if you look at the Premier League table, it is one that still has a very grassroots, ear-to-the-ground element to it. There are certain spaces that I guess traditionally people don’t see Crystal Palace in, but I love [challenging] that.”
That said, something is brewing down at Selhurst Park in Croydon, where the club’s stadium is situated, and it extends beyond current results on the pitch, which currently leave a lot to be desired. Annan-Jonathan’s role at the club is to help grow the fanbase and capture the fan of tomorrow, winning their attention away from consistent trophy winners like Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City, Real Madrid and Barcelona. One of the ways he seeks to do this is by creating products that speak to fans beyond what they wear to games.
He is coy on the specifics, but the designer namechecks brands such as Aimé Leon Dore in successfully creating sports-related fashion that extends beyond the core fandom of the New York Knicks and Yankees. Annan-Jonathan sees no reason why clubs such as Crystal Palace can’t do the same, especially if they represent the DNA of a specific region. “Culturally, think about what you could do with Crystal Palace, the element and the essence of what they represent – their tagline is ‘south London and proud’. That’s mad,” he says, citing the likes of Stormzy, Nadia Rose, K Trap, Dave, Krept & Konan and Michael Dapaah as figures who have proudly carried the area on their backs.
“I had spoken to Crystal Palace about this seven years ago,” says Annan-Jonathan. “About cultural marketing. That’s how I actually ended up getting [the job], because I built out my own agency [where] I was having a number of successes with the same things, where I had people who were saying this [doesn’t belong] within that space. And rather than continuously asking, I just decided to do it. People wear New York Yankees hats all the time [even if] they’ve got no attachment to [the team], you know what I’m saying? But stylistically it represents a culture, and we want to be able to design stuff that can exist outside of football.”
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“[Palace] connect to a specific audience and I think that is the perfect DNA for relationships with streetwear brands. Because they come from the same place; the energy is the same”
n recent years, football has begun welcoming partnerships with luxury fashion brands – think Wales Bonner designing Jamaica’s national team kit for adidas, or Y-3’s kit for Real Madrid. But the relationship between fashion, football and class is a complicated one for Annan-Jonathan, and he is keen to work the creases slowly and carefully. “I’m very conscious about how we service everyone within those spaces,” he muses. “What happens is you create all this dope product and services but then you get kids who can’t afford it. They don’t want to be spending £400 on a football shirt, you know what I mean? How do we still make it affordable and continue to create for [everyone across] the whole landscape?”
Traditionally, south London has always felt like an area annexed from the rest of the city. The lack of tube stations in the metropolis’s southeast corner, especially, has brought with it a collective feeling of isolation. “I think the good thing about [the club] is sometimes they are seen as the underdog, being a mid-table team,” says Annan-Jonathan of Palace, currently the only south London team in English football’s top flight. “They connect to a specific audience and I think that is the perfect DNA for relationships with streetwear brands. Do you know what I mean? Because they come from the same place; the energy is the same.”
He’s excited for the future of the game and how it aligns with fashion – and, more importantly, the fan of tomorrow. For Annan-Jonathan, a brand like Crystal Palace can grow into more than just a disruptor. It can lead the way for other Premier League clubs. “I think it’s important to tell those stories because that gap is where you’re able to bring people closer to the [clubs],” he reflects as we wrap. “Storytelling and design is definitely there for me. I’m passionate about that.”
Grooming TAKUYA UCHIYAMA using BUMBLE AND BUMBLE., photographic assistants RORY COLE, styling assistants STOYAN CHUCHURANOV, ALVARO MERINO DE MENDOZA, ELOISE