PARIS (Reuters) – Christian Dior has signed a two-year deal to design clothing for the French star-studded football team Paris St. Germain, marking its first tie-up with a sports club.
The move from the prestigious French fashion label follows the recent arrival of Argentina forward Lionel Messi to PSG, a move that generated buzz around the club over the summer.
Dior will design the club’s “official wardrobe,” ranging from dressier looks to casual items like polo shirts embellished with logo patches evoking the sports team and the fashion label, the club announced Monday.
“The timeless formal attire includes a cashmere coat, a jacket, a shirt, trousers and black derbies shoes”, PSG said, adding the inner sole of the shoes would be embossed by the players’ shirt number.
The tie-up fits a shift by luxury labels at Dior-ower LVMH to embrace streetwear, linking it to high-fashion with an eye to younger consumers.
Kim Jones, artistic director of Dior men’s collections, has played a key role in the streetwork thrust at the luxury behemoth.
Jones, who is known for working with artists and other labels outside of the luxury realm, inluding Nike, brought on rapper Travis Scott to co-design the label’s spring collection for men.
The pair showed colorful suits and logo-patterned knitwear in June, sending the looks down a catwalk decorated in a psychedelic desert theme, lined with towering statues of cactus plants and mushrooms.
Scott has also appeared in advertising campaigns modelling Dior’s popular Air Jordan 1 sneakers, embellished with a gray Nike swoosh filled in with the fashion label’s logo.
Messi, who has 245 million followers on Instagram, is seen as one of the greatest footballers of all time. He made his debut for PSG at the end of last month, the first time he has played for another club other than Spain’s Barcelona.
With Brazil’s Neymar, French livewire Kylian Mbappe and Messi, PSG has on paper one of the most potent attacking forces in club football.
Until the Dior deal, PSG had a clothing partnership with Germany’s Hugo Boss.
(Reporting by Nicolas Delame, Benoit Van Overstraeten and Mimosa Spencer; Editing by Peter Rutherford and Christian Radnedge)
