Football fashion and terrace culture will be celebrated in an exhibition at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery.
Art of the Terraces will combine art, fashion and popular football culture while exploring work from artists and designers who have been influenced by terrace culture.
It has a special significance to the city of Liverpool, whose football fans played an influential role in ‘The Casuals’ movement throughout the 80’s and into the 90’s.
Casuals is a media created term to describe the cult of football fans who developed their own styles and sense of fashion, despite the mainstream fashion world overlooking the casual brands such as Fila and Ellesse. The blue narrow jeans, suede adidas shoes and adidas t-shirts with trademark stripes on the shoulders would eventually see terrace culture make its way into the fashion industry.
Terrace fashion is now considered a global phenomenon and credited with the popularisation of sports and leisurewear.
One of the artists contributing to the exhibition is Leo Fitzmaurice. Hailing from Shropshire, he grew up with a passion for art and was heavily inspired by fashion trends in the 80’s.
He said: “It’s one of my projects that I’ve been working on for just over a quarter of a century.
“It came about when I saw a Marble top at Liverpool Football ground and I just took a picture of it and from there. I started noticing others and it just developed.”
Despite not having first-hand experience with terrace culture in Liverpool, Fitzmaurice was inspired by what he saw in the 90s and started incorporating it into his art.
He said: “It seems to have got more and more important and it’s kind of taking over religion in some ways. As an artist, it’s a major thing to look at these things that people find important and think about how it’s designed and branded, and then also think about how that connects up with other aspects of our lives.”
The exhibition opens at the Walker Art Gallery at 10am on Saturday 5 November.
