Pretty Poly: The History of the Football Shirt

by Alex Ireland

Pretty Poly tells the fascinating story of the football shirt, charting its dramatic evolution over a 150-year period, from modest beginnings to a product at the centre of a billion-dollar industry. An emblem of everything it means to be a fan, the football shirt evokes memories of triumph and disaster and acts as a symbol of belonging to a chosen footballing tribe. Packed with facts, figures and anecdotes, Pretty Poly explores the history embedded in every feature of modern-day strips. It covers their ever-changing shape, the emergence of dedicated club and national colours and the often surprising reasons behind them. It also looks at the companies and designers behind some of our favourite strips, and explores the birth and exponential growth of the replica-kit industry. Along the way, we learn the histories of the iconic sponsors, names, numbers, patches and badges, and meet the kit collectors with a burning lifelong passion as we delve into the burgeoning vintage kit market that feeds their interest.

Genres: Football

224 pages, Hardcover

Published November 15, 2023

Reviews

[Charlotte Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read for any kit collector! It is quite clear throughout that Alex has done his due diligence and thoroughly researched each topic meticulously. From conversations with fellow collectors or people from sports professions, including kit designers. Each chapter covers a different topic relating to the shirt, covering its history from the birth of the game in the late 19th century to the modern era, with an eye even cast towards the future with speculation as to where the football shirt will go next. What innovative designs or technology will be incorporated, positive changes such as removal of gambling sponsors and negative issues such as slave labour to produce fake kits. This book has it all and encapsulates it wonderfully together to take you on a journey, despite it all being about something so simple as a piece of polyester.

[MR A G PHILIP · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really excellent book. Well thought out book on the industry of the kit, from design to sponsors and the collector market place

[Malcolm · Rating 3 out of 5]

**Shortlisted for the 2024 Lord Aberdare Literary Prize for the Best Book in British Sport History**
3½
Sports uniforms, especially national uniforms, are complex things, standing in for all manner of being and identities – but the over emphasis on the semiotics of the nation can obscure the significance of the club and other uniforms – especially shirts. What’s more, the very ubiquity of the club shirt – football (as in soccer), various of the other codes (especially American football), but also other sports – can also obscure the specific past and present of the sport shirt. As Alex Ireland reminds us here, the uniform is quite recent in sport, and the ever changing, multiple shirt designs a year we see in some codes very recent, and marked especially by football.

Ireland is a football shirt collector, working to a specific framework, but like many fans has a deep knowledge of his fandom – enhanced by his work as an academic. In this exploration of a rather Brit-centric (which he concedes as a consequence of sources and his language abilities) he traces to emergence of the football shirt, its design features, exploring both the impacts of commercialisation and technical capabilities especially printing and fabrics. Yet it is very much on for the fan; I was hoping (which probably reflects my non-fan interest) in a more analytical discussion of the semiotics of the football shirt, of its shifting social and cultural meaning and context. Some business history and discussion of the design and production process perhaps – and it’s there, but wrapped up in the detail of what in places seems like lists of examples. And yet unpacking those issues might have given the book the more critical edge hinted at in the opening few pages.

This makes it seem like a missed opportunity, or perhaps an unbalanced discussion where Ireland recognised his shirt-fan-cognoscenti but didn’t really push them to consider some of the complexities of sports clothing. For instance, there is a short but valuable discussion of environmental costs and production ethics including workers’ rights in the industry, but I can’t help but think by including it in the section on replica shirts he allows us to side-line the way those issues are inherent in the industry as a whole, not a consequence of replica shirt industry specifically. It would be wrong to think that early 20th century textile workers in the UK, France, the USA or elsewhere had it comparatively good, for instance. The focus on corporate heads and company turnover and contracts rather than the production process in the early years leaves these questions unasked let alone answered.

Similarly, as an insider – a serious collector and an academic – I would have hoped for a slightly more critical unpacking of the culture, practice, and organisation of collecting. This might have included, for instance, the problems of authenticity – I can’t help but wonder, for instance how many shirts Maradona wore during the ‘hand of God’ game; an awful lot seem to have been claimed as the one. Some of these things are hinted at, but left barely considered. It feels, again, like a missed opportunity.

Even so, I quite enjoyed it, although it feels very much like one for the aficionado.

[Stephen Kirley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Couldn’t put this down. An absolute must read for any football kit collector/kit connoisseur.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good review of the development o& modern shirts, split by subject rather than time, so chapters about replicas, material, etc