Footy fashionistas need cleavage, big hair, drop crotches
Peter Munro | February 8, 2009
WITH the action resuming on the football field this weekend, it's time to consider the all-important fashions beyond the boundary line. Cast aside bad memories of white shoes, camel-coloured suits and funnel-neck collars. This year's look for AFL players is all about big hair, man cleavage and drop crotches. Let The Sunday Age be your guide, as we forecast the fashion trends and follies of season 2009.
Hair is back in a big way. Carlton captain Chris Judd has spent the off season massaging his scalp into a half-decent head of hair (the back half). The new crop of AFL recruits are similarly hirsute. No. 2 draft pick Nicholas Naitanui sports a flourishing mop, while Richmond's Tyrone Vickery wears an unruly Afro that billows at the sides like Sideshow Bob in full flight.
Richmond forward Nathan Brown is among established players growing out their hair. But he draws the line at a Warwick Capper-style mullet — an iconic look best described as "business up front, party in the back".
Brown, who designs his own men's wear range, forecasts football players' wardrobes will show more class than arse this season. "We've gone through an era where it was pretty laid back with jeans and T-shirt. I think the collared shirt is making a comeback," he says. "What's not good is all these bright pastel tees and massive gaping necks guys wear showing off their chest. I think it's all the young kids of today — I call them "smoofties" — dressed in skin-tight jeans and pastel pink T-shirts and looking like dills."
The club's new recruits favour "tight denim shorts and big Reebok pumps, trying to look like they're out of Run-DMC," he says. While stalwarts such as Matthew Richardson have opted instead for heroin chic, with black jeans, vintage T-shirts and a Pete Doherty-style black bowler hat.
Vega host Dave O'Neill is reckoning on a footy fashion revival this season, with the return of the Don Scott man bag, full-face beards and the Brereton perm. The Tigers squad might also support new recruit Ben Cousins by adopting a shirts-off and stomach tattoos policy. "Maybe their tattoos will be of other famous Australian sayings, like 'No Australian child will be living in poverty', 'It's time' and 'Life wasn't meant to be easy'," he says.
Skin art is back in fashion, with Collingwood recruit Dayne Beams boasting a coloured tattoo of flames, a deck of cards and an Australian flag snaking down his right arm. His new teammate Dane Swan now sports a three-quarter sleeve tattoo that resembles a 14-day Contiki tour of Asia, with images of a Hanoi mask, lotus flower and Japanese temple. So many Magpies have tattoos that The Age mused last month whether being a "cleanskin" might soon prove as unusual as wearing black footy boots.
On that score, Essendon midfielder Kyle Reimers promises to turn heads by retiring last season's bright orange boots in favour of a lime green pair. But Warwick "white boots" Capper says football fashions have become a drab show and this season will be no different. "I reckon they'll keep going a bit conservative. I was the king of mullets, but I think hair has gotten boring," he says. "I reckon the flair is coming back, but maybe not for a couple of years."
Fashion stylist Franco Schifilliti says the utilitarian look is in vogue, complete with "rough and ready" washed cotton tartan check shirts, leather jackets and puffer jackets. Rachel Wells, fashion editor of The Sunday Age , forecasts a big show of "man cleavage" this season, with plunging T-shirts and unbuttoned shirts. The drop-crotch trouser — or MC Hammer — is back in vogue also. "Maybe players will opt for sports shorts a size or two too big, rather than a size or two too small as they did in the 1980s," she says.
Like the WAGs (wives and girlfriends), AFL players are also showing more flesh. Angie Macolino, of Mens Body Works salon, says players from clubs such as Richmond, Hawthorn, Collingwood and the Western Bulldogs are increasingly opting for bespoke waxes of their lower extremities. "Some guys leave a snail trail or landing strip. We've even dyed some hair at the front red and blue."
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