Seeing his version of the St. Pauli centenary shirt really inspired me to create something of my own. St. Pauli is a team which is quite close to me, I have been to Hamburg numerous times, it's a glorious city with lots going on there and I have always admire St. Pauli and of course the Reeperbahn ;-).
If you're wondering why I am banging on a lot about a 2. Bundesliga team so much, then I think it is time for a little bit of educating and if you don't you may aswell skip forward to the next paragraph. St. Pauli isn't an overly illustrious club, but what St. Pauli is, is an institution, a way of life for some people, to be different is to be St. Pauli or what is now defined as 'Kult'. St. Pauli is located near Hamburg's infamous red light district 'Reeperbahn' and from this nightlife evolved an alternate fanscene which the club was quick to adopt officialy. Soon after the skull and crossbones (Deutsch: Totenkopf) was adopted by the supporters as a symbol an unoffical symbol which can be seen all around their Millerntor stadium. One of the most important moves the club made was to ban all right-wing, nationalist activities at the stadium this has led to the many conflicts with opposing neo-nazi fan groups especailly at away games. As you can see St. Pauli isn't just like anyother club, they are the antithesis to most modern clubs especially fan base wise where their 20,000 stadium regularly sells out even whilst in the Regionalliga Nord. St. Pauli also boasts the biggest female following in the league and many other punks and skinheads, people who would be otherwise regarded as different in society regularly attend matches.
Well now that rant is over, it is down to the kit. For a 100 year celebration I really wanted to make some special and something that stands out for the right reasons. As you can guess St. Pauli's kit history is very checkered, it includes such kits as a brown camouflage kit, an all back with cow print and stenciled metal font. The majority of kits include brown so that was an obvious choice for me. The club also employs a good deal of red in their logo so I thought it would be wise to throw that in, aswell as being in quite famous (around the stadium anyway) flags. Another colour which is incorporated largely in the logo and flags is white. So that gave me my pallete to work with, brown-red-white, doesn't exactly sound the special but I tried to use it to my best effect and of course it would be unique.
One thing I knew I needed to have on the shirt is the skull and crossbones design and rather than just add one I added a load to the red band around the stomach which you can just about make out if you look carefully, their must be about 20 or something all in different sizes. To make the shirt stand out I decided to try something I can't remember seeing on anyother shirt, and that is to divide it horizontally into three colour sections, white shoulders and chest, red band around the middle as previously noted and brown as the bottom selection to blend into the rest of the brown of the kit.
One thing I am really pleased with is the font on the back of the shirt, I think it works really well and identifies itself as unique in football, it is supposed to be a take on the punk album "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols" by, of course, The Sex Pistols. Of which St. Pauli made it's own t-shirt version based on the album art. I just decided to take this a little further and incorporate it into the actual shirt.
The shorts are pretty basic but do have a large white trim around the legs to space out the brown a little. Then the socks feature a Argyle diamond pattern in the red and white colour as another unique take kind of replicating grandpa socks. They also feature the Totenkopf at the top and the 1910-2010 at the back.
The sleeves of the shirt feature the Marian stars which can be found on top of the castle in the St. Pauli logo and Hamburg city crest, Another small detail is the coat of arms itself on the back of the shirt at the bottom. Finally to show that it is the clubs centenary year the words 100 Jahre (100 years) are located beneath the St. Pauli logo.
No comments:
Post a Comment