Crystal Palace is the first English club to have a creative director

Exactly two years ago, on June 2, 2021, we published an article on nss sports entitled "Do clubs need a creative director?" who wondered about the importance for teams to define themselves also through an aesthetic strategy and with projects related to art and fashion. The mutual influence between fashion and football is now consolidated and it no longer makes sense to be surprised by this short circuit, in these two years the clubs have increasingly presented collaborations with other brands in the last week the collections between Juventus and 032c were shown and between Birmingham and Undefeated. However, it is difficult for the clubs to focus on an internal creative director to bring out the brand and off-pitch projects, a choice taken instead by Crystal Palace, which has just recently announced that Kenny Annan-Jonathan will be the new Creative Lead and will take care of collections of the London team and new partnerships with brands. 

According to BoF, the English marketing expert will have the first task of creating a Fall-Winter collection, to be presented already in the 2023/24 season. Already with his agency The Mailroom Annan-Jonathan had taken care of projects for the striker Michail Antonio and just for the former Crystal Palace captain Wilfred Zaha, who moved to Galatasaray in this transfer market session. The next creative director of the Palace explained the reasons for this strategy, saying how "the world in which the average fan expresses their love for sport has evolved and it is now for the clubs to evolve with them". We will certainly have to expect new collections from the club in the future, which perhaps follow the fashion calendar and not that of football, creating two parallel tracks but in constant dialogue. New collaborations with fashion brands will also be added to the traditional merchandising, and it will be necessary to understand whether Macron, technical sponsor of the Eagles, will also be involved in these projects. Crystal Palace is the first English team to rely on a creative director and the scenario ahead is yet to be written, waiting to see if other clubs will follow the same path.