Business As Usual
Some insight on Martine Rose's fondness for football
Designer Martine Rose sees this summer’s World Cup for what it truly is—a global stage. It’s a platform with more cultural capital and visibility than a singular runway show, and a celebration of the culture of football that has proved to be a major theme among the British-Jamaican designers’ collections.
So, when on July 17th, the designer announced that her latest linkup with Nike would be “elevating squad style with a suiting collection for the United States Women’s National Team,” I certainly wasn’t surprised. But I also wasn’t prepared for the sense of absolute aesthetic awe I had for the collection when I saw photos of all 23 members of the squad boarding a bus bound for Eden Park in their custom-tailored Martine Rose x Nike suits.
The team left the hotel donning matching black houndstooth suits, each emblazoned with the players’ initials. The suits were paired with a classic, well-pressed white button down—a business professional staple to cement the notion that this squad is there to do just that: take care of business. The Nike x Martine Rose Collection features the aforementioned player’s suit jacket and trousers, as well as a trench, shirt, and accessories that include stockings, gloves, and sunglasses. Last but not least, the capsule collection is rounded out by the latest iteration of the Nike x Martine Rose Shox Mule MR 4. (The collection is available to shop here, but good luck getting your hands on most of it).
Rose’s ascension to fashion circuit favorite began in South London, where she was born and raised. Music, specifically 90’s rave culture, has been a perpetual theme of her streetwear designs since her industry arrival. While her work has long been inspired by British footballing culture, only more recently has the designer started to so blatantly explore the intersection between women’s soccer and style—and both industries are all the better for it.
A brief history of Martine Rose:
Martine Rose is your favorite designer’s favorite designer. In 2007, Rose founded her eponymous menswear label and has since received cosigns from the likes of Drake, Rihanna, and Balenciaga’s Demna Gvesalia (if you were a fan of anything Balenciaga in the mid-2010s, Rose likely had something to do with it). She was a mainstay creative in the London-based design incubator Fashion East for three seasons between Spring/Summer 2011 to Spring/ Summer 2012, as well as a key member of emerging menswear designers (including Loewe’s JW Anderson, who will certainly be the subject of a newsletter due to his love for tennis) that helped lay the foundation of what is now London Fashion Week: Men’s.
“All the original signature elements of Rose’s work — including short torsos, flared trousers, oversized denim, droopy shoulders, bomber jackets and sportswear references — have become part of a shared fashion language now spoken by everyone from Louis Vuitton to Dior,” wrote Vogue writer Annachiari Bondi in 2019.
Rose collaborated with Nike for the first time in 2018, which saw her take on a tracksuit and a Martine Rose x Air Monarch model. The collection drew inspiration from English and American sports culture (she said she was particularly obsessed with basketball players at the time.)
In 2021, Rose designed an England football shirt that honored the trailblazing “Lost Lionesses”—the first women's football team to represent England at a major international tournament, which was the 1971 Women's World Cup in Mexico—timed to the UEFA Men’s Euro Tournament. She recruited footballers such as Leah Williamson and Mason Mount (back when I thought he would never leave the Chels) to model the shirt in a campaign of unbridled celebration of footballing joy.
Her second linkup with Nike coincided with the UEFA Women’s Euro Tournament in 2022. It was reimagined, uniquely Rose take on the Shox sneaker that was promoted by the unsung heroes of women’s football across the globe. Nine women starred in the raw, documentary-style promotional photos, all hand selected by Rose herself. Each of the “models” has devoted themselves to advancing the women’s game. Quotes such as “We won’t be silenced,” “I safeguard women in football,” and “football helped me to survive” are printed across the campaign images, which were taken by the French portrait photographer Pascal Gambarte and art directed by the London-based stylist Tamara Rothstein.
The women include Kat Craig, a human rights lawyer who defends sexual abuse victims in football and helped the Afghanistan women’s team flee in 2021, Hope Powell, England’s first black, female manager and Khartoum Dembelé and Founé Diawara, founders of Les Hijabeuses, a safe space for female Muslim footballers in France following their federation’s decision to ban hijabs. Jess Grant, a mother, and founder of the women’s, non-binary, and trans team Spice Goals FC, was photographed holding her baby with the words “I don’t care if you are offended" postered across the image.
“What women have to overcome to play football needs to be made public,” said Rose.
While the campaign for her third—and latest—collaboration with the American sportswear giant is far more lighthearted, it’s nothing short of a revolutionary fusion of football and fashion.
The USWNT might be wearing the suits pitch side, but Lionesses’ captain Leah Williamson was one of the faces of the campaign. Other cast members of the cheekily labeled Martine Rose Sports TV campaign include England legend Rachel Yankey, British TV icon Ruby Wax, Amelia Dimoldenberg, and “Lost Lionesses’” Janice Emms and Jean Elliot.
"The culture of football has always been a major part of my collections," Rose told CBS Sports. "I have always referenced football. It has been a massive learning curve with me, understanding women's football specifically, and that has been a journey I have gone through exclusively with Nike. "Nike has been a vehicle for me to explore the world of women's football and it has been a huge learning curve. Over the last two and a half years, since I really started studying the game, and getting under the skin of it, I have learnt so much." (Same girl! Except not at all because I don’t have a Nike collab).
Rose was clear in her intentions with the collaboration: the prowess of these women on the pitch should be taken seriously.
“I felt the women’s team should be presented as the elite athletes they are – and with the same polish and seriousness as the men’s squad. The look needed to be clean, and also not distracting – to focus on the person wearing it. The proportions are still quite compact, neat and sporty feeling, there’s a nod to that with the fabric too. I wanted to design something that felt real and would make the players feel confident and respected.”
The USWNT’s resident big fit-puller, Megan Rapinoe, certainly feels that way. "Wearing this suit to walk out on the field feels like the culmination of my whole career — to elevate the women's team look, to show something unexpected, and to continue to push boundaries in what it means to be an elite female athlete," Rapinoe said in a statement. "I love the mash-up that sports and fashion and culture has become, and as an athlete, I've always wanted what we wear to stand for more."