Fashion and Football: 'The Spice Boys', Masculinity, Male Bodies and Moments of Contestation

This presentation will explore a particular moment in the complex and multi-faceted relationship that exits between football and fashion. In 1996 the Liverpool team presented themselves wearing cream Armani suits as part of the media build up to that year’s FA Cup final. The representation of the team and the subsequent treatment received by those from within and outside the game make visible certain cultural and sociological ideologies. Such ideologies which concern ideas around class, masculinity, and (in this case) the male body, are powerful and have far reaching effects that remain relevant today.
Of particular use here is the work of Henri Lefebvre and his ideas around moments of ‘contestation’ (Lefebvre, 1969). Lefebvre discusses the idea of an uneven development across social experiences precipitated by the existing class structures and capitalist hierarchies. Such uneven development creates ‘differences’ manifested within the formation of identities. These differences in turn create what he terms – lags, distortions, or disassociations.
Such ‘lags’ or ‘gaps’ between groups and individuals create specific environments. Within these conceptual spaces, moments of contestation occur where resistance to the superstructures that govern and control everyday existence take place. Such lags or gaps and the resulting differences or contestations they produce are often unacknowledged or misrepresented. As a result the reality of everyday life contrasts with that officially sanctioned or proposed as culture and/or knowledge.
Central here is a discussion of the role that the body and clothing play in marking out or positioning ideas around class, as Skeggs states; ‘representations have to work on the body for them to be read as authentically belonging’ (Skeggs, 2004:111). When working class men, of which footballers are convenient symbol, engage with consumption and grooming in such a visible way the subsequent reactions highlight not least, middle class insecurities around subjective value and distance from working class experience.