Y-3 importance in the fashion football relationship Yohji Yamamoto's contribution was ahead of its time, and today it reaps well-deserved celebrations

In a football context, the word “collaboration” probably brings to mind Jordan x PSG or Palace x Juventus. Just last week the stunning Aries x New Balance range for AS Roma dropped. Earlier this year LC23 brought Bari to international attention with his tentacle print Kappa jerseys, and Marcelo Burlon’s feathered graphics adorned Napoli’s shirts the season before that. Nemen x AC Milan, Drôle de Monsieur x Monaco and Daily Paper x Ajax are just some of the pairings that have made their way onto the pitch, without mentioning the joint efforts that had the streets in mind, like Supreme x Umbro or Off-White x Nike. The collaboration’s rise to prominence is perceived as a relatively recent phenomenon, especially in the football’s sport. All of the above examples have come in the last five years, but just four years after the first Y-3 release back in 2002, Yohji Yamamoto had already infiltrated the game, and eight years ago he designed his first jersey. Starting out though, he was given sneakers to rework and three stripes to apply to his signature oversized silhouettes, creating something completely different from what adidas had to offer at the time. Having some restrictions and a framework to work within challenged him and inspired him creatively, as he sought to balance the representation of his own identity with that of the German brand, without leaning too heavily to one side.

For the 2014-15 season, he designed Real Madrid’s away kit. Black being a regular away color for Real, it was the perfect canvas for the designer, who stamped the torso with a faint graphic representing two mythical beasts from the east, the dragon king and the dragon bird. Earlier this year, he reunited with the club for a Y-3 branded fourth kit, echoing his original design from eight years earlier with a full monochrome look, the simpler graphic this time a pattern of lines, which also ran through the accompanying collection. The Y-3 x Palace Skateboarding collaboration encapsulates the evolution of the streetwear landscape and its fusion with fashion and football. The overlap of these three worlds has grown so much that although collabs of this nature still generate plenty of hype and excitement, we are no longer surprised when they are announced. The lines between these once separate entities have been crossed to the point that they are now blurred, and Yoji Yamamoto probably does not receive enough credit for his role in that process.

The union with Palace is a celebration of the twentieth anniversary of Y-3, the initial collaboration between adidas and Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, which proved so successful that it became a permanent fixture with standalone stores around the world. It was Yamamoto who initially reached out to adidas to pitch the idea of combining his unique avant-garde style with their athletic wear, at a time when the fashion industry did not mingle with sport in any meaningful way. The huge success of his early Y-3 collection opened the floodgates for the now ubiquitous sports-fashion crossover. Raf Simons, Rick Owens, Stella McCartney, Gosha Rubchinskiy and Gucci among plenty of others have all ridden the wave thanks to the trailblazing Yamamoto, and those are just some of the Three Stripes’ many collaborators, never mind other brands. The 2022 Y-3 Madrid kit was also part of the 20th anniversary celebrations, just like the Zinedine Zidane fronted “20 years: Re-Coded” campaign and the Palace link up. Three very fitting parts, all reflecting the non-linear nature of Yamamoto’s work, blending elements of the past, present and future. His influence on the relationship between football, fashion and everything in between has been somewhat obscured by recency bias and the constant release of new collaborations in the industry, but his legacy will rightfully show him as a pioneering figure who was years ahead of the curve, and his work this year is a timely reminder of that.