Image: Keith Pattison, from the wonderful ‘Toon Army 1996’ published by Lower Block and available here.
Marcel Proust once famously said;
“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were”
I think that adding a little bit of a rose-tint to any memory helps to keep a happy memory in your brain for probably longer than it should. Something that is never far away from my memory is the home shirt that Newcastle United once famously wore between 1995 and 1997. Debatably* the greatest football shirt of all time, worn by the most entertaining Newcastle team ever… there is no debate about that. A team that boasted the talents of Ferdinand, Shearer, Ginola, Beardsley, Asprilla and John Beresford… lit up the Premier League for two exhilarating seasons, very nearly pipping the all-conquering Manchester United to the top of the table. Most of us love an underdog, most love entertaining football, but not all of us care as much as I do about that football shirt.
I could write a book about the cultural significance of the shirt and, weirdly, I reckon it would be very long. I could talk about how it was the first shirt that had been specifically designed for it to be worn on nights out (I have this on very good authority), I would go on a three chapter odyssey about how people who didn’t even like football would wear this shirt, I can talk about how a friend back in the day got his aunty to get the shirt printed in Newcastle with #9 Shearer on the back because she was going to Newcastle for the day… only to get the unofficial (shock!) printing on the back.
Because I was weird child and my dad came from a textiles background, I became obsessed with not only the team, how the shirt looked and Newcastle as a whole, but more than that I became obsessed with how the shirts were made. The mesh three stripes on the arms with blue piping, the retro woven tag at the bottom which was always placed too high, the perfectly sized Newcastle Brown Ale logo (incidentally, the shirt wouldn’t have been anywhere near as iconic without that colourful and local sponsor), the four chunky buttons, the knitted intersection pattern where the black meets the white, the fact that it was made in England, the fact that every shirt was made by hand so the logo placements were different on every shirt, the three stripe woven label in the side seam, the adidas logo on the size label and finally, and probably the most important feature, the polycotton collar that just had a weight and body to it. This made it feel like a shirt that you could almost go to a job interview in. There are very few things that linger in my mind quite like this shirt and so, as you can imagine, the shirt being reissued last week was a highlight of the year so far.
I ordered the shirt before the clock hit 09:01 and it was on the way, delivered to my parents’ house on Saturday whilst I was out walking the dog on a typically icy January day. I hopped in the car, drove over and was greeted with my dad (and fellow football shirt connoisseur) saying, whilst still holding the shirt in the black plastic postage wrapping “well it certainly doesn’t weigh as much as the one from 1995.” My heart sank as I began my inspection. The shirt was the wrong shape, the wrong fabric, the buttons were wrong, the fabric was wrong, the embroidery was wrong, the sponsor was wrong (even though this version has a much nicer print than the originals), the woven label was in the right place for the wearer, the woven adidas label on the chest was too nice, the shirts were made in Vietnam, the buttons weren’t as chunky and, worst of all, the collar was made out of polyester and had a sheen to it. I was crestfallen.
In the grand scheme of things, with the way that the world is now, adidas and NUFC managing to mess up a re-issued shirt and manufacturing it as cheaply as possible, really isn’t the worst thing in the world, far from it. However, what nostalgia does to us affects us in different ways. I was lucky enough to have several of these shirts, study them and enjoy them. I still have a few tucked away as the true collector that I am. I know that I was an extremely lucky kid in the being able to get these in the ’90s when many of the people who bought these shirts weren’t even alive or able to control their bowels when Ferdinand and Asprilla were scoring goals for the Magpies in this shirt. Understandably, they wanted to have one to revel in past glories. I understand that the vast majority of people just wanted a shirt that ‘looked’ like what they wore during this period and recognised that the reissues were never going to feel the same way. I just think that if you are going to do something, especially with it being so iconic, it needs to be produced to the absolute best of the manufacturer’s ability and this definitely wasn’t… but does that matter? To me and the people that care about these things, yes. To the vast majority of people that bought the re-issue and will send them to landfill within five years, probably not.
Nostalgia is one of those things that people will always pay for hoping that it reignites an old memory or how we felt during a certain period. You just have to look at the increasing number of bands reforming, music festivals that cater to people who were once 24-hour party people, but now want to be in bed for 20:40. From a football shirt point of view, the number of re-issues and retro design influences that we have on modern releases goes to show that we always want to embrace the past, it’s part of the culture of football.
In my mind, making shirts as important as this on the cheap just dilutes their significance and, as a textile nerd, dare I say that I almost find it offensive?! Every day of my life I’m researching fabrics, designing garments and supporting British manufacturing. They should be doing the same with this piece of wearable history and treating it with the respect that it deserves.
I think the only real conclusion to make here is that if you are going to re-make something, always make it for the geeks. Always make sure that it ticks all the boxes because people who care about this stuff and are the protectors of it, will always remember you for it and sing your praises. For those who bought one, who have never had one before, enjoy it and love it. I will be forever jealous of you getting to wear and experience it for the first time. Like introducing a friend to an album that they have never heard and you know they will love.
If you have had one before and you’re not even 30% happy with it, send it back, speak to lovely people like Amy or Ryan on Twitter when you find a retro shirt online to make sure that it is authentic. Then snap it up. Our mate Chris still has amazing contacts for finding the original style print for the back of the shirts too, just so you aunty doesn’t make the same mistake as my mates did. Don’t settle for anything less than what you remember, life is too short to settle for anything less than rose-tinted glasses… or should that be Brown Ale glasses?
*There is no debate, if you say different, then you are wrong.