Stripes on Uniforms

[AndrewPF]

This is something I've always wondered:

How come stripes on soccer uniforms are seen as classic, neat, and generally accepted while stripes on other kinds of uniforms are not?

A striped (and I mean thick stripes, not pinstripes) baseball football or hockey jersey would be called ugly, poorly designed, archaic or something to that effect that would suggest oldness or unattractiveness.

On the other hand, soccer clubs like Celtic and Juventus wouldn't be Celtic and Juventus without their stripes. Not limited to those two clubs, stripes are often seen as a fashionable design element in soccer kits.

How come many of us love Celtic's hoops while cringing at the Senators' barberpole re-boots? In short, what makes stripes okay in soccer, but not in other sports?

[IceCap]

Different designs work for different sports. Pinstripes are seen as classy in baseball and basketball, but would be derided as gaudy in hockey. That's just how it works.

[phutmasterflex]

Different sports, different culture.

Each sport has a certain common design that teams have worn over the years. Like pinstripes, it looks great on baseball uniforms but terrible on an American football uniform.

And some soccer jerseys kind of look like polos, so those kinds of stripes you speak of aren't too out there on a jersey that looks like a polo.

It's more just cultural and what we're used to. I bet that if stripes were more common on a basketball jersey, we'd be OK with it. But since it isn't and there hasn't been an overhaul where half the league wears it, we don't think of it as something that's good.

[Gothamite]

Not surprising that each sport would develop its own æsthetic.

Context matters. Wearing a navy dres shirt and matching pants looks silly, unless you're a cop.

[pheer]

I think in some cases it also has to do with the cut of the uniform, the amount of material, etc. One of the reasons a hockey sweater would look bad with pinstripes is simply the sheer number of stripes there would be. American football wouldn't work due to the tightness of the jerseys stretched over pads, creating uneven lines. Just my two pennies.

[phutmasterflex]

I think it's also the visual of the game as well. Since television has become a huge part of sports, adding more color to the uniforms is very important.

Like soccer and football, having two primary colors on a uniform helps a lot in identifying players on a team when viewing the game on a very large field. Hockey fits in that category as well with the sweaters being different colors than the shorts.

In basketball, the jersey and shorts are one uniform color. And baseball, for the most part, is home whites and road greys. Smaller playing field allows the team to have less colors and more unique designs on the uniform to take notice.

[Billy B]

I think it's also because there's no wordmark or large logo/number like there are in the Big 4 sports. The main design element of a baseball or basketball uniform is almost always the wordmark across the chest. There are some exceptions where teams where stripes (Wizards/Bullets, old Astros), and in those cases I'd bet a lot more people would be able to tell you the striping on the jerseys than what the wordmark looked like. In football and hockey, the crest or numbers are the main design element on the front of the uniform. Because of that, stripes on the sleeve are much more effective. Not to mention that the helmet is often the most important branding element of a football team.

[oldschoolvikings]

Stripes? Where's Dennis Bergin?

[hockey week]

Same reason why white (and light colored) pants work in football and baseball, but not hockey. It's simply tradition.

Just kind of thinking out loud, Football and Hockey evolved out of Rugby, and Rugby sweaters at the turn of the 20th century were either barber pole stripes or plain. Therefore, multiple horizontal stripes were very popular in hockey's early days (see: Ottawa Senators, any other barber pole teams) and a few went plain (See: Toronto Arenas), and football had some of that, but gravitated more towards the plain sweaters. Early football sweaters quickly added the leather strips for ball control, and most of them were vertical. As those became unnecessary, football jerseys became very plain, with just numbers and sleeve stripes (and those weren't always in vogue. See Giants). Baseball had its own lineage, and the design really hasn't changed all that much, with high socks and huge collars being the only design elements that are truly gone.

Doesn't soccer predate all of them, at least in some form? Actually, I think the largest thing is where they developed. Hockey was northern North America, Football mid-to-northern North America and quickly moved south, baseball was all over North America, and soccer was more of a European thing. Check out the thread about pink, I imagine it's much the same as "national tastes".

Anybody want to agree or disagree with my ramblings?

[DeFrank]

Well I mean... there was this.

[hockey week]

that was based on precedent.

The vertical stripes are stitched-on leather to grip the ball

Or the more traditional

Which evolved into this:

and eventually

That's what that whole vertical striping thing is about. Why none of it stuck, I'm not exactly sure. Any thoughts anybody?

[The_Admiral]

A striped (and I mean thick stripes, not pinstripes) baseball football or hockey jersey would be called ugly, poorly designed, archaic or something to that effect that would suggest oldness or unattractiveness.

There are lots of people here (and elsewhere, surely) who would like to see the Senators or 67s wear barberpole sweaters full-time, for whatever it's worth.

I could get behind a thick-striped basketball jersey. I tried drawing a black and yellow Hornets alt once.

[Saintsfan]

Most of it comes down to tradition. Soccer and rugby have a tradition of hardly ever changing uniforms if possible, so teams chose as distinctive uniforms as possible. Stripes were a way to make a uniform more unique. (Bad syntax I know!)

[winghaz]

I'm sorry, but I don't like the thick, vertical stripes on soccer uniforms. They may look good to many people, perhaps most, but not to me. Vertical stripes like that should only be worn by refs.

[ARTnSocal]

I don't like soccer kits with vertical stripes that include the black/white or red/white ..... I especially hate Newcastle's, they look like they should be working at the Footlocker. Same with Notts County, Juventus, West Brom, etc. The white shorts of WBA & Juve make them somewhat more acceptable. Southampton, Sheffield Utd, and Sunderland with their red & white with black shorts are awful, Stoke City at least has white shorts ..... For some reason I'm okay with Atlético Madrid.

Teams with vertical stripes like AC Milan, Inter, Crystal Palace, Barça, etc, all look fine to me, Whoever designed the Bradford City kit with their stripes with that color design should be shot.

The Horizontal hoops like Celtic and QPR look great but to each his own IMO.

[tBBP]

A striped (and I mean thick stripes, not pinstripes) baseball football or hockey jersey would be called ugly, poorly designed, archaic or something to that effect that would suggest oldness or unattractiveness.

There are lots of people here (and elsewhere, surely) who would like to see the Senators or 67s wear barberpole sweaters full-time, for whatever it's worth.

I could get behind a thick-striped basketball jersey. I tried drawing a black and yellow Hornets alt once.

Be sure to tune into the Washington Wizards after/if the lockout ends.

[BrandMooreArt]

Not surprising that each sport would develop its own æsthetic.

Context matters. Wearing a navy dres shirt and matching pants looks silly, unless you're a cop.

Gothamite's best post ever

[Gothamite]

Well, it might have had a little more punch if I hadn't managed to misspell "dress shirt".

[whitedawg22]

The New England Patriots tried sublimated vertical jersey stripes for a few years in the 1990s:

I read somewhere that Bob Kraft wanted to emulate European soccer teams with this look, but now I can't find a source for that.

[Lights Out]

By the way, how the hell did Reebok manage to come up with those awful numbers for the Pats' throwbacks? It's the same number font as the Carolina Hurricanes and Reebok produces their jerseys. And they got the NOB font right, too! It's supposed to look like this: