From a design perspective, the recently-concluded Fifa World Cup 2014 at Brazil was a nightmare. Officials from Fifa had set down some incredibly tight rules for logo designs, placements, advertising on jerseys and even on caps and track suits that players wore when they were off duty.
Sample this, Fifa insisted no jersey number can have a stroke width more than two centimetres. Colours too were under Fifa’s control. The football body insisted uniforms carry a maximum of four colours and there was a big no to “anything reflective or colour changing”.
Designer labels, however, took up the challenge and this Fifa World Cup has been, despite the extremely pedantic rules, a product placement bomb! Hugo Boss, official tailor of the German national team this year, spared no expense in dressing up 130 team personnel — right from head coach Joachim Löw to captain Philipp Lahm — in bespoke formal wear.
Even the travel bags the team carried were Hugo Boss. No wonder Löw stood out as the sharpest-looking coach out on the field, as opposed to Luiz Felipe Scolari from Brazil. And then there was Louis Vuitton, picked on June 17 to design the official case for the solid gold World Cup trophy. The case had LV screaming from the rooftop — monogrammed logo, brass locks... the works.
Even Karl Lagerfeld jumped in on the World Cup wagon — collaborating with Melissa, a plastic footwear brand based in Brazil, to bring out this strange-looking sandals (priced at $116 per pair). And finally, as part of a Louis Vuitton package, there was Gisele Bündchen in a printed mini dress straight from the brand’s Resort 15 collection — obviously.
