The Style Renaissance of Mario Balotelli (and 2010s Premier League aesthetics)
Plus, a SportsVerse Q&A with Faith Kipyegon.
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Of the many sports-fashion crossovers at Paris Fashion Week, one stood out to me above all.
Mario Balotelli made his official runway debut last week, closing the show for Kid Super, the New York streetwear label founded by Brooklyn’s very own football lover, Colm Dillane.
The appearance topped off what has been an unlikely yet remarkable recent fashion renaissance for Balotelli.
During his time at Manchester City from 2010 to 2013, Balotelli’s antics (on and off the pitch) led him to be forever known as one of the Premier League’s greatest ever cult heroes.
Born in Italy to Ghanaian parents and fostered as a young child by an Italian family, Balotelli was truly one of a kind. At 19 years old, he arrived at Manchester City with a £24 million price tag and the world at his feet, believed to be one of football’s most prodigious young talents. Yet it very quickly became clear that his off-field adventures would come to define his early career. In 2010 alone, he was allegedly:
Spotted firing air pistols in Milan's Piazza della Repubblica
Photographed with two Italian mobsters
Reprimanded for throwing darts at a youth team player
Questioned by police after driving into the grounds of an Italian women’s prison “to have a look around” when sidelined by a knee injury
In 2011, Balotelli had to escape from his burning home in the early hours of the morning after he and his friends had been setting off fireworks in his bathroom on the eve of the Manchester derby.
His on-field behaviour was also unique. In one of the most infamous celebrations of Premier League history after he scored the first goal of Manchester City's 6-1 away win over rivals United in October 2011, Balotelli lifted his jersey to reveal a question written on his undershirt that simply read: “Why Always Me?” — a dig at the incessant tabloid and sports media coverage of his life.
Did he mature with age? It seems not. Last year (then, 31 years old), he was seen lighting and launching a firecracker in the direction of some of his teammates in the locker room of Turkish team Adana Demirspor, laughing away in the process. (FWIW, I’m all for it — we need people like Balotelli to keep things fun in sport.)
It’s safe to say Balotelli’s playing career did not fulfil its initial promise, but the man was a renegade and truly shifted football culture in a way that few others have. Mario was, and is to this day, unique. And as a young football fan who was bored of the PR-trained, media-friendly robots that sport can often churn out (and the expectations of the media for young Black athletes to behave in ways they dictated), I loved him for it.
As unique as every other aspect of his personality was his fashion sense, characterised by the wildest drop crotch pants, fur coats, asymmetrical zippers, giant cardigans, outlandish sneakers and his trademark mohawk. Truly a sight to behold.
His style was clearly a hit at the time. Balotelli was named among the top five best dressed men in the world in a 2012 GQ article. A follow-up feature in 2015 by the GQ editors was titled “Mario Balotelli: Most Stylish Man Alive”. The intro reads:
“The Allen Iverson of European football is erratic on the field and a walking PR disaster off it. But the dude has game: In drop-crotch pants and a sideways snapback, Balotelli is a joyous bane to crusty old footie fans and a hero to a legion of fanboy style bloggers. When we asked Balotelli who his best-dressed teammate is, he said, simply: ‘Me.’”
While “Allen Iverson of European football” was a wild claim, GQ’s point still stands: Balotelli’s fashion sense was as chaotic and idiosyncratic as the man himself. This was before footballers had personal stylists and Instagram pages tracking their every outfit. Balotelli was the ultimate non-PR trained athlete at the onset of the social media age: simply a dude on the cusp of his 20s getting paid stupid money, which was spent predominantly on outlandish fashion, fast cars, partying and in his specific case… fireworks.
It’s this exact spirit which turned Balotelli into a cult hero to many young fans in the early 2010s, who, like me, obsessed over athletes who rubbed the establishment up the wrong way.
Balotelli, the Fashion Muse
Balotelli is reaching the end of his playing days, but his fashion career is just taking off.
Clint, the founder of UK streetwear sensation Corteiz, known for his many adaptations of throwback football culture, decided to pay homage to Balotelli earlier this year when he was pictured in public wearing a copy of the famous “Why Always Me?” base layer. It turned out this was a hint at a more formal relationship between the pair, as Corteiz recently dropped an entire capsule inspired by Balo himself, and even featured him in the campaign modelling an adaptation of the Italy national team tracksuit.
Appreciation for Balotelli is part of a wider trend in which the fashion and sportswear worlds have sought to capitalise on the aesthetic of 2000s and 2010s sports style. This year, Nike relaunched its coveted T90 range, for example. Adidas is all in on bringing back its iconic F50 football boot silhouette. Mizuno is making a comeback. VERSUS recently chronicled the weird and wonderful 2000s style of Premier League icons like Carlos Tevez and Freddie Ljunberg. Football is in its nostalgia era.
The Kid Super Spring/Summer 26 show in Paris last week — in which Balotelli was the final model to walk on the runway — was titled “The Boy Who Jumped Over the Moon”. Fashion commentator Denola Grey described it as “a masterpiece in storytelling: whimsical, unbound, and brimming with the freedom of expression that only comes from a truly unfiltered mind.”
It could not have been more fitting that Balo was picked not just to walk in, but to close out such a show. With his unfiltered mind, freedom of expression and vibrant individualism, Mario Balotelli was truly the boy who jumped over the moon.
SportsVerse Q&A: Faith Kipyegon
Before I left Paris last week, I caught up with Faith Kipyegon, three-time Olympic gold medalist and world record holder for the women’s 1500 metres and mile distances. It was the day after her Breaking4 attempt, and she was keen to tell me more about her long-running partnership with Nike and what it’s like to co-create products which help her go out and compete at the highest level.
DYM: What is your relationship like with Nike?
Faith: Yeah, actually, Nike is like my second family. I have been with Nike since I started my career, and to see the donation Nike made [to a maternity ward at a hospital in her home country, Kenya] today, I was over the moon because I’ve always wanted to give back to the community where I came from, where I was raised. I think this will be a huge inspiration to the young girls in my community to know that you can come from anywhere — no matter the background of education you have, no matter what the circumstances you can rise from anywhere, so yeah, so it's really huge.
How did it feel signing with Nike back when you were a young athlete?
Yeah, I have believed in the Nike team since I joined them when I was young, It's this belief that I still have in them. They have supported me in the hardest of times, through everything, so that I could be my best. I don't think I could be where I am today without their support and without them providing me with the right products over the years.
What was it like working with the brand to co-create your race suit and spikes for Breaking4?
It was really so cool, you know, to be given opportunity to test something nobody has ever put on, and give the Nike team consistent feedback to improve the product to its final form. Yeah, it was really huge for me to get that product and test it over a period of time and give them feedback. I felt so comfortable using them yesterday, so it was really cool, and the experience was so amazing.
That’s all for today, friends. Thanks for coming along for the ride.
See you next time,
DYM
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