In the wake of last week’s offering, Jim Hearson had an idea:
While we're in the mid-90s, it was Forest's peak in my lifetime and the furthest we've got in Europe since Anderlecht cheated us in 1984.
With that in mind, how about some 95-96 Adidas Forest kits, to emulate our previous European exploits?
— Jim Hearson (@JimHearson) November 1, 2019
It was a request we were happy to carry out – Forest were clad in adidas when they twice won the European Cup under the guidance of Brian Clough and so a refreshing of that alliance was worth a look (Forest did resume their partnership with adidas from 2013-18 but failed to make too many positive memories in the three stripes the second time round).
After consultation with Jim, we used the diamonds design – worn by Spain, France and Norway (away), among others, with Spain having an updated version in 2018 – for the home kit.
In the mid-90s, Umbro used more black than was strictly necessary on the Forest home kit and this approach is followed here to give it a temporal feel.
As Jim points out, having two columns of black diamonds replicates to some extent the actual 1994-96 home.
While the fact that both this the away strip (right) feature diamond-like shapes is fitting, given the real-life maker of the strip at the time.
The actual 1995-97 Forest change kit was none-more-90s, featuring an abstract pattern with Umbro spelling their own name wrong (under the ‘La’ of ‘Labatt’s’, you can make out ‘BMRO’, with the ‘U’ covered by the sponsor).
In order to represent the busy-ness of that kit, we have used the style as worn by Germany, with the colours making it resemble the shirt of Mexican side Club America.
As always, your own views on these kits – and future requests – are invited. Comment below or tweet us @museumofjerseys.
Looks great. Would be great see that home shirt as a real one.