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MASHUP KITS FROM THE HEART: FLOOR WESSELING

MASHUP KITS FROM THE HEART: FLOOR WESSELING

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Josh Lee0

We admit that talking about a guy who mashes up kits is a bit on the nose for our brand, which, is all about the mashing up of culture and football. However, Floor Wesseling is somebody who truly embodies the ethos of KTTP. The Dutchman grew up listening to Hip-hop, wearing Raiders Stater Jackets, and collecting kits from all across Europe. Wesseling is a graphic designer who worked for Nike designer National Team kits and currently is the Art Director for the Dutch National Team or KVB.

Floor’s latest project “Blood In Blood Out” is named after the 1993 film depicting the lives of Paco, Cruz, and Miklo as they struggle with the issues of identity, race, family and gang violence in their East LA home(Vatos Locos Forever). The collection also deals with similar ideas using kits and their crests as symbols of identity that inspire loyalty or animosity. It is a nod to European heraldry, the evolution of the kit as garment, and a social experiment meant to troll some of the long held and sincere hatreds in world football. 

 








A central theme of “Blood In Blood Out” is the power of symbols and the way they hide in plain sight on a football kit. When commissioned with an art show in Ireland, Floor plastered promo posters across the city with a half Irish half English kit. The community took matters into their own hands. “I Instantly realized I have something here because people are ripping the posters off…They hated seeing that combination.” Floor has even received death threats as a result of his mashed-up rival kits in certain communities where the tensions between clubs is especially high. But as he asked one complaintant, “Who would Ajax be without Feyenoord?”

Trafficking in team colors and club crests as “wearable flags”—he interested in how those symbols appeal to our personal, prickly senses of tribalism. Time and time again, Floor has seen that it’s all fun and games until it is your club that has been given the split shirt treatment.

“They love the projects throughout the years. I always got compliments, until it’s about you. If your rival is shown combined with your shirt, your identity, you get mental at me.”





Is it basic sadism to concoct kits capable of shaking the ardent footy fan? Floor would argue a more positive, purer intention. Through the catalog of controversial custom-mades, he makes no attempt to mask his distaste for his rival Feyenoord. The combination of these well-known public symbols is cathartic. “Unification in the face of obvious rivalry.” He takes a football shirt and uses it to talk about everything but football.

“Not talking about football, just using it as a canvas. Telling the story about Europe through heraldry.”

The most iconic of Floor’s cut and sew pieces include England/Argentina, House of Tudors, and Old Firm United. They quickly eclipse tired homecoming homages and leave you in a state of justified mystification at what two disparate symbols can conjure together. Wesseling is moving past the incediary rival kits and has began to make kits that represent a specific individual’s identtiy. He has made kits representing the entire careers, like the one he did for Ruud van Nistelroy, whose eyes lit up when he looked at the visual journey that the one shirt encapsulated. Floor also details a time when he was approached by a man in such wonder who asked for a Greece/Portugal shirt to represent the culture of his parents, his culture, and his blood.

As a designer, Floor Wesseling is an old pro in the football beautification business. He may be doing it in a manner in which we have never seen, but “Blood In Blood Out” is a footballing mirror. It reinforces what we value when the things we devalue are placed just inches away.




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