Designed by RACHEL MACLEAN and HANK WILLIS THOMAS
When is a football shirt more than just a football shirt? When it’s a work of art, obviously. And OOF should know, because in collaboration with Umbro UK, OOF are releasing two incredible artist-designed limited edition shirts that will look just as good on the football pitch as they will in a gilded frame hung next to the Mona Lisa.
This is our second collaboration between OOF and Umbro. This time we’ve enlisted the amazing Hank Willis Thomas and Rachel Maclean for two head-spinning, eye-melting works of sartorial psychedelia, both limited to 360.
Rachel Maclean is a Scottish artist whose work plays with cuteness, pop and internet aesthetics to often unsettling effect, and usually to poke holes in the fragile fabric of society. She’s had shows at places like the National Gallery and the Venice Biennale, and now she’s done a football shirt. Her work for our collaboration features a joyful smiley face emoji, twisted and distended into a swirling nightmare of neon pink and bright yellow.
Hank Willis Thomas is one of the most important American artists working today, using his art to critique ideas of oppression, racism and the legacies of slavery in contemporary society, all while pushing for liberation and emancipation. The shirt for his collaboration extends his work with the Wide Awakes collective, a group set up in the wake of the contentious 2020 USA elections to fight for cultural change and ‘to radically reimagine the future and enable self-emancipation’. The shirt features a huge, hypnotising eye in dizzying op-art-like black and white stripes. Coming out just after get another heated, tumultuous US election, there couldn’t be a better time for Hank’s message.
Wear them to score yet another hat trick at your five a side game or frame them on your wall: they’re football shirts, they’re art.
Available at www.umbro.co.uk and www.oofgallery.com both £65 from Friday 22nd November at 13:00 GMT.
Shirts available to buy direct from OOF Gallery, N17 from Saturday 30th November. OOF Gallery, Warmington House, 744 High Road, London, N17 0AP