The Design Room: The Invisible Kit
Earlier this week we delved into our archive to bring you some kits that have made us laugh and cry. Amongst that batch was the infamous Manchester United grey kit, from the 95-96 season. Famously, after going 3-0 down, the team switched kits at HT during their match against Southampton. The players blamed their poor performance on the kit, they said they couldn’t see it – so they couldn’t see each other.
Many laughed at them (as well as the kit), surely they could concede they had an off day (after the kit change they still lost 3-1, just so you know)? One person who definitely didn’t laugh, though, was one of our kit designers – not because he designed it, mind. He offered an explanation to why that kit really wasn’t very good.
As is obvious, you need to have intense looking kits in order to ensure high visibility - maybe all of those day-glo kits aren’t so bad. Grey as a kit colour isn’t a problem, either. I was told “it was just that particular grey was made from a combination of colours, it was more like layers of grey – much like white noise on a television.” This meant it had “a similar visual to the crowd in the stands, it was almost camouflage; you were looking straight through it.” In a word, the kit was: distracting.
Ironically, United’s misfortune was a blessing for goalkeeper kit design. People started to think that a visually distracting pattern would work in favour of ‘keepers. I’m not particularly sure if it has but it’s a nice sentiment.
On 22 Aug 2009, at 12:01 am Tim wrote:
It wasn’t just one off-day though. United wore the kit on the first day of the season and lost 3-1 to Villa (the day of Alan Hansen’s famous “you’ll never win anything with kids” comment). They then lost 1-0 to Arsenal and drew 1-1 at Forest in it. In December United lost 2-0 to Liverpool in the grey before they ditched it at half time against Southampton in mid April and never wore it again.
United never won a game in this kit and won just 1 point from 15 in the five games it was worn!
On 3 Sep 2009, at 11:58 am Danny wrote:
wtf?
On 20 Jun 2010, at 3:56 am Review: Brazil Away Shirt 10/11 (Nike) « They Think It's All Over… wrote:
[...] it comes with all the bells and whistles of modern shirt design. There’s no way that Brazil could pull a Manchester United and blame the kit for any defeats they suffer in South Africa (though they won’t need to, with everyone so keen [...]
On 17 Aug 2010, at 6:24 pm LES WALTER wrote:
Dear all,
Re: Sports Shirt design concept.
I hope that you may be able to assist me in my venture.
It is difficult for me to disclose my idea in writing for fear the exclusivity will be greatly diluted and my design perhaps copied which defeats the object of my search for a contact in the Sports garment industry.
Suffice to say that I have managed to produce a Football related shirt design which has not only a UK appeal but a Worldwide one. The idea came to me just prior to the World Cup and upon production in a friends garage of just a few samples my order books were filled to capacity.
So far I have managed to produce and sell over 2,000 shirts based on the principle of the design and I truly believe the concept is such that I have decided that the project is beyond the realms of what I alone can handle hence my quest for an organization to discuss the production and distribution of said design.
No doubt you have had many individuals coming to you with what they believe are good ideas and yet they have not even trialed the market. I can assure you my idea as mentioned above has been trialed with a good measure of success already.
If you think Umbro will be in the least bit interested I would relish just 30 minutes of your time to discuss the matter further. I assure you it will be 30 minutes well spent.
I hope this letter gives rise to some interest and look forward very much to hearing from you.
Best rgds,
Les Walter.