Retro TOFFS football shirts: Vintage Sportwear is Changing the Game

Just like fashion, football seasons are primed around newness. As well as players, rivalries and bids for the title, three new kits arrive for each Premier League club every year. But the rise of the vintage football shirt market means this could be changing. Increasingly, fans are moving through the turnstiles on match day in old shirts.

They may have got lucky, by finding one in a local charity shop, but most of these are sought-after; some particularly hallowed shirts are worth thousands of pounds and hyped up as sacred objects. Online, the world of vintage football shirts sees many young men (it is mostly young men) debate the intricacies of different seasons, graphics and even the sponsors that appear across the shirts.

Rory O’Connor, the marketing manager of the retro sportswear store TOFFS, says his passion in vintages shirts is not just about aesthetics – the nostalgia is inspired by what happened on the pitch and around the world. “I have always been interested in vintage design whether sportswear, cars, watches etc. Each era has its own cues that ebb and flow in and out of designs,” he says. “What I love about the range of kits here is that you can see how design has developed through the past hundred years across hundreds of teams around the globe.”

“The TOFFS brand is iconic and has three decades of history behind it: working with major clubs, kitting out England captains, and the first game to be played at Buckingham Palace. The ambition is to look to the next 30 years to unlock new generations of fans and other sports, but most importantly to remain a family-run business committed to crafting premium vintage sportswear – made by the fans, and for the fans.”

Of course, the general retro clothing and athleisure has grown in popularity over recent years. Rory compares the growing market to the Hypebeast scene for vintage coats, skiwear and sportwear, as seen on sites such as Adidas. “Over the past few years most other brands and teams have dipped into their archives to reissue or tribute to past designs. I think there are a lot of opportunities that are untapped here in terms of different design cues across the decades as well as other sports,” says Rory.

But, by and large, the vintage football shirt world has an “if you know, you know” mentality at its heart. This is a concept that makes a lot of sense in modern football culture, where the fanbase (in the Premier League anyway) is increasingly housed in a corporate climate characterised by huge stadiums, endless sponsorship deals and tickets hovering at the £50 mark.

Abbey Green, the TOFFS’s social media manager, talks about some unique attributes of the retro sportwear brand established since 1990. “Firstly, all garments are handcrafted using traditional methods by our team at headquarter in Gateshead using all-British materials. The attention to detail is second to none, our aim is and always will be to recreate the iconic jersey designs worn by some of the greatest teams in history, down to the finest detail. Moreover, we have a selection of close to 2,000 products covering 240 football teams from all over the world – we are for all the fans from Non-league to The Premier League to celebrate the nostalgia and success of yesteryear.”

“The recent coronavirus outbreak has hit all businesses big and small and it is definitely going to be a challenge.” Says Abbey. ” Today two of our staffs asked for leave due to the health condition and childcares amid the virus pandemic. And sport cancellations have been tough but our job as custodians of sporting nostalgia is to celebrate and remind fans of their glory days – and we will continue to do that. These things happen but we have an incredibly loyal customer base supplemented with a new breed of conscious consumers who look to support businesses manufacturing in Great Britain.”

To learn more: https://www.toffs.com/