We love books and we love kits. Unlike Eoin McLove’s jumper-cake, these two things do go together and we really love books about kits.
Three recent purchases come under the heading, though just two of those are about football and both are in Italian. We probably should start to learn it though, as there is quite the bibliography of clubs’ kit histories – though, of course, the visuals are universally understandable. Roma and Sampdoria are two teams we’ve always had a soft spot for and they are two of the best examples of the genre.
La maglia che ci unisce (The shirt that unites us) is the Roma effort, and it’s wonderful from the off, with a composite dream team, each player wearing the shirt from his era – though, perhaps oddly, Francesco Totti isn’t included.
Inside, every single variation worn by i giallorossi, including goalkeepers, is featured (click for larger):
In the interests of fairness with regard to copyright, we won’t show everything, but we had to include this third kit from the early 90s, it just looks wonderful:
La maglia più bella del mondo (The most beautiful shirt in the world) is a brave title for the Sampdoria book, but there are more than a few who would stand over the assertion.
The Roma book uses visually pleasing graphics throughout and while the Samp one, written by Luca Ghiglione, does for the early years, matchworn examples are used where available (again, click for larger):
A nice inclusion is that of prototype shirts, like this one mocked up by Hummel when they were bidding for the bluerchiati contract.
Cycling is not a sport in which we’ve ever had a huge interest, but exposure to the wonderful works of Richard Moore has given us a certain apprecation. In any case, sporting outfits of all kinds appeal to us.
In addition to working for Prendas, Andy Storey has an incredible collection of cycling jerseys and has published them in his book, The Art of The Jersey.
Benefiting from not having to include every single jersey of a particular team, Storey is able to pick and choose and presents the content in a nice, spacious style with little nuggets of info accompanying each one (once more, images can be enlarged).
All of the books are available in the places you’d expect, but we don’t want to invite accusations of favouring any online seller over another. We’d highly recommend all three.
