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Umbro enlists Avnier designer Sébastian Strappazzon for new lifestyle collection
After launching a first lifestyle collection last winter, sportswear brand Umbro has unveiled in France its new look for Spring-Summer 2022, dropping a capsule collection designed by Sébastian Strappazzon, co-founder of streetwear label Avnier with French rapper/producer Orelsan.
“We met for the first time in 2017,” said Guillaume Reux, in charge of Umbro on the French market, “as part of a collaboration with Avnier. We kept in touch and, during an interview at the beginning of 2021, the idea of working together again in a different way took shape, with the goals of connecting with a new audience, enhancing [Umbro’s] brand image, and conveying [the brand’s] football culture in a new environment, complementary to the sporting goods sector. It seemed natural we should team up, drawing on Sébastian’s design expertise and creative touch.”
The football-inspired collection consists of 13 items, and is called ‘Our Game Lives Beyond the Pitch, 2nd half’. It includes oversize t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies and tracksuits, available in a range of bright colours from blue to green, yellow and red.
Among the collection's highlights, a contemporary lifestyle take on the classic football tracksuit, the Terrace jacket, available in black and green with matching black joggers, and a football-style polo shirt, available in shades of black and electric blue.
Strappazzon has had a connection with Umbro ever since adolescence: “in the 90s, when I was in school, all the cool guys wore Umbro,” he said. With this collection, he wanted to tap the brand’s feistiness - in the best sense of the word. “I wanted to produce something fresh and bold. The starting point was the excitement you experience at a football match, so I used the colours of the heat maps [that chart the players’ positions on the pitch] and worked with gradations. I was inspired by the 1980s and 90s, and I drew on my recollections of that period to design something people will want to wear today,” said Strappazzon.
The new lifestyle collection has been developed in parallel with Umbro's performance lines, and is expected to expand in future through the addition of new collaborations. The latter “will punctuate our route until the brand's centenary in 2024, notably in tandem with Supreme,” said Reux. “We will also launch a number of initiatives featuring football jerseys, creating unique narratives around these iconic products,” he added.
The collection created with Strappazzon has been available since the end of March on Umbro France’s e-shop and at partner retailers.
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