History and aesthetics of the St. Pauli jersey

The color brown is certainly not a coveted color when it comes to designing a football jersey, which is why it is one of the rarest to find on the pitch. Just think about it, there are no brown home jerseys. Occasionally, the color appears on some third kits, but when it comes to team colors, there are very few examples. The color that most resembles brown among those used by some clubs is maroon, a solution adopted by several clubs, but it is a shade closer to red than brown. Perhaps because football is passion and brown is probably the color furthest from the concept of enthusiasm. A neutral color, almost boring. But above all, a color that could not be used in the early days of football, when matches were played on dirt pitches that turned into muddy swamps at the first downpour and a brown jersey was not ideal for visibility. Or perhaps because making a brown uniform simply cost more than making a red or blue one. Whatever the reason may be, today there is only one soccer team that comes to mind when thinking of a brown jersey: St. Pauli.

Even here, the reason why St. Pauli chose white and brown as their team colors is not clear. There is no official version. "The story of how 100 years ago the choice of brown came about is not clear, my idea is that there were no other colors, or it was simply the favorite color of the first president," explained former commercial director of the club Bernd von Geldern in an interview from February 2023. There are urban legends, assumptions, and theories that are difficult to verify. If you try to visit the official museum of the club, you will not find any explanations or documents from that time. And even the official website of the club does not explain it, the only passage dedicated to team colors states that: "in 1909 Amandus Vierth won the dispute over team colors, still in use today. From that moment on, brown and white were the official colors of the club."

There may not be an official reason, but this has not stopped St. Pauli and their technical sponsors from creating high-quality brown jerseys. For example, the jersey used this season and made in-house, the one that is accompanying St. Pauli towards promotion to the Bundesliga for the first time since 2010, features white borders and a red gradient on the chest to celebrate the city of Hamburg. Over the years, we have seen different solutions: we have had a jersey with vertical white and brown stripes, a semi-camouflage version for the years spent in the Regionalliga, a jersey with a red diagonal sash in the style of River Plate, and a variation on the theme in 2010 with a very diluted shade of brown. The future could hold great surprises.

Given the difficulties in finding a technical sponsor who guaranteed sustainability standards shared by the club, since 2021 St. Pauli has been producing their own uniforms and for this reason the Di!Y logo, which stands for "Do It Yourself," appears on the jerseys. However, the 2024/25 season will mark the return of the collaboration between St. Pauli and PUMA, with the German company officially committed to producing game and training kits with recycled materials. The big curiosity lies in the color choice, as the last time PUMA was the technical sponsor, between 1997 and 2000, St. Pauli "abandoned" brown and used white jerseys with brown inserts. Three very similar jerseys with polo collars and a two-button closure, which became cult items due to the Jack Daniel's logo placed in the center. In the meantime, Jack Daniel's has been replaced as the main sponsor, but almost 25 years later, there is a feeling that the collaboration between PUMA and St. Pauli could still result in a highly successful jersey. Probably a brown one.