MEYBA X PETER O’TOOLE: THE ART OF FASHION AND FOOTBALL

Business, Culture & Lifestyle, Fashion, Feature, News, Trends
Roo Oxley

October 18, 2024

Writer Roo Oxley discusses fashion and football culture, taking a look at the launch of the collaboration between the iconic Barcelona-based sportswear brand Meyba and artist Peter O’Toole. Together, they bring his iconic football art to a range of oversized T-shirts, blending retro football vibes with a modern twist.⁠

FOOTBALL CONNECTION

Football culture runs deep. We all know that. We know the bond that connects us, engages us, separates and enrages us.

But it has irrevocably and irreversibly changed. Subcultures are dying out and drying out all over the show, none more so than football culture.

Modern football is slick, quick, soulless and too serious. Corporate kits are sponsored up to the hilt, advertisers ever-vying for a top spot to be seen by the eagle eyes of the red-button football fan.

Not only was football and terrace culture more fun and lively in the Nineties, but so were the strips.

A firm fan favourite, for example, is Umbro’s eponymous Italia ’90 England strip. Worn with perfect aplomb and applaud by New Order’s Bernard Sumner. Everyone loves the World Cup 1990 ‘World in Motion’ football top.

This strip is engraved in our minds and ingrained in our psyche. Why? because it was a vintage year, a football year, a World Cup year.

The Nineties’ laid-back colourful aesthetic reflected and represented the optimism of football fans throughout the country in what can be described as the beginning of the football culture renaissance of the next decade.

There has been much written (me included), about the heritage revival trend, most commonly understood by certain brands being brought back to life, including Benetton, Fila and Lois.

Not only are vintage brands being sourced emphatically all over the net, aficionados wanting to emulate and affiliate with the legendary Eighties’ terrace culture are looking for replicas in which to represent their style; retro-core anyone?!

Without fear of reprisals from the few snooty and territorial older casuals (Appropriation? Us?!), who arguably borrowed from the stylish Milanese youth (Paninaro) and lifted looks from the Mods, Punks, and Skins themselves (shhh, no cosplay allowed—that is, no reimagining of a subculture’s stylistic identity… yawn), the more subtle and discerning football enthusiast may instead choose the less obvious route: unique retro football brands.

We are not talking typical shirters and strips that hark back to this gilded age, such as Manchester City’s ‘Brother’ or Manchester United’s ‘Sharp’ football strips, but the cooler European kits from such Spanish behemoths such as FC Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Real Betis. Who wouldn’t want to be dressed in the same Iberian flair as football giants like Pep Guardiola, Maradona and Johan Cruyff?

Meyba is the Barcelona-born brand that supplied these dream teams and can genuinely boast about their unchallenged football pedigree.

MEYBA X PETER O’TOOLE

Fashion and design should be an unrushed, organic process. We can see through fast fashion, cheap material and a careless, bothered attitude to designing kits.

Logos don’t have to scream; the aesthetic should speak for itself. Meyba prides itself on its attention to detail, high-end materials and well-casted collaborations.

Everyone from Towie stars to a Real Housewife has jumped into a collaboration of some kind. A rapid chance to maximise profits from a viral video, these types of collaborations are disingenuous and disposable. Meyba as a solid football brand need not jump into the fire and sell their soul and identity by teaming up with anyone who might not share their brand values.

Choosing instead other brands and people who are symbiotic to not just themselves but their target market is key, hence Meyba’s previous collections include working with The Beatles Estate (football/fashion/music, the holy trinity), Defected (for younger festival goers) and teaming with Johan Cruyff himself (for the football icon purist).

Meyba’s latest collaboration is with the art world’s rising star, Peter O’Toole. A huge footy fan (Huddersfield), O’Toole’s retro designs and chosen football fandom are a match made in brand synergy heaven for Meyba.

His original artwork, repurposed from his personal project, Studiotoole Strip Club, documents Eighties football kits from all over the world. Researching in painstaking detail the kits of not just the big famous clubs, but those off the beaten track (Stoke!), O’Toole’s drawings of retro kits from the Spanish football goliaths, have now made their way onto a new collection.

Oversized, louche Meyba T-shirts with impeccable detailing are teamed with applique versions of the players kitted out in their Eighties strip. Cool, fun, different. The hunt for sourcing unique garments is harder than ever in our consumer-centric world.

But the latest Meyba x Peter O’Toole range incorporates football history with actual artwork from a football fan whose star is most definitely on the ascent. Limited edition and exclusive with both football and art lineage. A winning combination, surely?