It’s been a minute. Eleven months, to be exact. We spent most of it building, hosting and, yes, surviving a World Cup on home soil. Now we’re back in your inbox. This issue covers Burberry’s full circle return to the terraces, the crochet bucket hat that defined Norway’s tournament run, the next Blue Table Series with Man City, and a look back at how the very first Fashion Meets Football came together. From here on, expect the same mix: the stories where football and fashion collide, the people making it happen, and first word on what we’re doing next.
Burberry Wants the Terraces Back
Written by Abdoulie Lemon
After years of trying to shake off its association with football culture, Burberry is heading back to the stands.
There is something quite ironic about Burberry’s latest campaign. For Autumn 2026, the British fashion house has gone all in on football. Not the glamorous side of the game either. There are no Champions League lights or perfectly manicured pitches. Instead, ‘A Good Sport’ is built around the things that make British football feel British: the stands, scarves, rain, touchlines, coaches and the rush before kick-off.
Eberechi Eze, Declan Rice, Leah Williamson and Son Heung-min all feature, alongside Stephen Graham, Jason Sudeikis, Romeo Beckham and others. Burberry describes the campaign as moving “from the pitch to the stands”, with Daniel Lee describing the brand as something that has been a constant for football fans over the years.
He isn’t wrong, but that relationship hasn’t always been so comfortable.
When Burberry Became Terrace Wear
To understand why this campaign feels significant, you have to go back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Burberry’s famous check started appearing somewhere the luxury fashion house probably never imagined it would become so recognisable: the football terraces.
Traditionally, terraces were the standing sections of British football stadiums where supporters gathered to watch their teams. Over time, the term became associated with much more than just a place to watch football. It developed its own culture, from the chants and atmosphere to the clothing worn by supporters on matchdays.
Football supporters had already been mixing luxury fashion with matchday clothing for decades, with the casual movement of the 1970s and 1980s introducing designer labels into British football culture. This introduced labels such as Stone Island, Sergio Tacchini, Lacoste, Fred Perry and Aquascutum into British football culture. Expensive clothing became part of the visual language of the terraces, and Burberry fitted naturally into that world.
The scarf in particular became instantly recognisable with its beige, black, white and red check wrapped around the neck of a supporter on a cold Saturday afternoon. Burberry caps, jackets and coats followed.
It was expensive, British and most importantly, everybody knew what it was but popularity can be complicated for a luxury brand. As Burberry became increasingly visible within football and British working-class culture, its famous check began developing an identity that the company could no longer completely control. By the early 2000s, the pattern had become heavily associated in the British media with the so-called “chav” stereotype, while its adoption by some football hooligans created another unwanted association.
The connection became so strong that some pubs and bars reportedly refused entry to people wearing Burberry and other labels associated with football trouble. Suddenly, one of Britain’s most recognisable luxury patterns meant something completely different depending on who was looking at it. For some, it represented British heritage and luxury, but for others, it represented the terraces.
The Check Became Too Famous
Burberry found itself in a strange position: its most recognisable design had become almost too recognisable.
The check was everywhere, helped by the explosion of counterfeit versions that made the pattern even more visible. The famous image of actress Danniella Westbrook dressed almost entirely in Burberry check alongside her similarly dressed daughter became one of the defining images of the period.
Over time, Burberry began making the check less prominent across its clothing. Rather than covering entire garments, it increasingly returned to linings, scarves and smaller details. The brand hadn’t completely abandoned the check, and it would be too simple to say Burberry wanted nothing to do with football. But there was clearly a distance between the luxury image Burberry wanted to build and the version of Burberry that had developed on Britain’s streets and football terraces.
For years, those two versions of the brand existed awkwardly beside each other, then fashion changed.
Football Became Fashionable
The funny thing is that many of the things fashion once looked down on eventually became fashionable, and terrace clothing is a perfect example.
Stone Island jackets, football shirts, tracksuits, scarves, adidas trainers and other pieces once closely associated with match-going supporters have become references across contemporary fashion.
The Burberry check itself went through a similar revival. By 2017, Burberry was collaborating with Gosha Rubchinskiy on a collection heavily influenced by British football and casual culture. Harrington jackets, caps and the famous check were suddenly being celebrated through the same aesthetic that had once made the brand’s relationship with British popular culture so difficult.
Football wasn’t something fashion needed to distance itself from anymore, it was something fashion wanted a piece of, and Burberry slowly started moving closer again.
Marcus Rashford worked with the brand in 2020. Son Heung-min became an ambassador in 2022. Eberechi Eze and Cole Palmer appeared in ‘It’s Always Burberry Weather'. Footballers became regular faces around Burberry shows and campaigns.
Now, with A Good Sport, there isn’t much distance left at all.
Back to the Terraces
What makes ‘A Good Sport’ interesting is how openly Burberry embraces the football aesthetic. The brand itself describes pieces in the collection as reworking “classic terrace style”. The pieces include: Harrington jackets, polos, scarves, parkas and overshirts. Clothes that wouldn’t feel particularly out of place walking towards a football ground on a Saturday afternoon.
Even the campaign focuses on fandom rather than simply using footballers as famous models. That distinction matters because Burberry isn’t just putting Declan Rice in a trench coat because he’s famous. It is using football culture itself as part of the identity of the collection.
It is showing that the stands matter, the supporters matter, the matchday clothing matters, even the unpredictable British weather matters.
It feels less like football appearing in a Burberry campaign and more like Burberry deliberately stepping back into football and that is what makes the whole thing come full circle.
Burberry Wants Football Again
There is a wider story here about the relationship between fashion and subculture. Fashion has always borrowed from the street, but it doesn’t always celebrate those influences while they are happening. Sometimes a style has to be removed from the people who created or popularised it before the wider fashion world decides it is desirable.
Football culture has experienced plenty of that. The terrace aesthetic that was once portrayed through hooliganism, class stereotypes and tabloid panic is now referenced by designers, luxury houses and fashion campaigns around the world.
Burberry’s relationship with football might be one of the clearest examples. Twenty years ago, seeing a group of football supporters covered in Burberry check could represent an image problem for the brand. In 2026, Burberry has created an entire campaign around Britain’s love of football, filled it with some of the country’s biggest players and celebrities, and openly described the clothes as terrace style.
The terraces didn’t suddenly discover Burberry; they had already made it part of their uniform. It just took Burberry a little longer to realise that being part of football culture was something worth celebrating.
In Case You Missed It
Martin Ødegaard’s wife Helene Spilling has taken up crochet, and she’s really good at it.
Helene Spilling has been putting her crochet skills on full display this summer, creating a series of one of a kind pieces during the 2026 World Cup. Arsenal and Norway captain Martin Ødegaard was spotted wearing several of her creations throughout Norway’s tournament run, including a Norwegian flag bucket hat.
Read our post or view the original on Instagram. For more of Helene’s crochet, visit @helenespilling and her Heklehatt shop.
Save the Date
In the Press
Our founders David Bettenhausen and Chris Savino sat down with Niru at The Commercial Table to talk about how the very first Fashion Meets Football came together. As many of you know and experienced firsthand, it was a four day weekend that Juventus paid to anchor before a single guest had walked through the door. This story covers how we sold an event that didn’t exist yet, why Juventus was a natural fit, and the moment A$AP Ferg held a Juve shirt up to the crowd.
How a deck got Juventus to pay
The Commercial Table · Nirupam Singh
