{"id":117774,"date":"2025-06-10T04:10:17","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T04:10:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/117774\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T04:10:17","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T04:10:17","slug":"the-history-of-the-sash-a-football-shirt-status-symbol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/117774\/","title":{"rendered":"The history of the sash, a football shirt status symbol"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of our\u00a0Kitted Out<\/a> series, an exploration of the impact of soccer kits on culture and fashion.<\/p>\n

Whether it is the red stripe of Peru, River Plate or Rayo Vallecano, the diagonal sash \u2014 in all its forms and colourways \u2014 is fundamental to football kit heritage. But where does it come from and who started the trend? That depends on who you ask.<\/p>\n

In their early days, football shirts were completely plain, so to distinguish two opposing teams, it is believed that a sash band was first introduced as a tool for players to differentiate between team-mates and the opposition.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s plausible that early versions were not part of the shirt itself, but rather separate sashes worn over the kit and tucked into the shorts,\u201d Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster, says. \u201cThis would have been impractical during play, which may explain why it didn\u2019t become widespread until later, when it could be fully integrated into the shirt design.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Historical Football Kits<\/a>, as the game in England was developing in the 19th century \u2014 specifically in schools and universities in the lead-up to clubs being officially formed \u2014 \u201cplayers would turn out in whatever they had to hand and teams would be distinguished by wearing distinctively coloured caps, scarves or sashes over cricket whites\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Peru, pictured at the 1936 Olympics, are classic purveyors of sashed shirts (The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

One of the earliest instances of a sash design on an official club kit traces back not to Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Lima, Peru, but to Lancashire and the former mill town of Burnley.<\/p>\n

Approaching the final decade of the Industrial Revolution in 1887, Burnley wore a white shirt with a dark blue stripe going from the right shoulder to the left hip.<\/p>\n

The shirts, which sported the royal coat of arms on them, are said to have been presented to the club following Prince Albert Victor\u2019s visit to Turf Moor in October 1886 for their friendly against Bolton Wanderers (who later that season wore a kit with a sash themselves). It was the first time in history that a member of the British royal family visited a football ground.<\/p>\n

\u201cSashes have a long history as markers of status, allegiance, and authority,\u201d Professor Groves says. \u201cWorn across the body, usually from shoulder to hip and over the heart, they carry immediate symbolic weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey date back at least to the 17th century in European military and ceremonial dress, where officers wore them in national or regimental colours to denote rank. Monarchs, nobility and chivalric orders used them in formal regalia and by the 18th and 19th centuries, they had spread to fraternal organisations like the Freemasons and the Orange Order. Sashes also featured in civic and state ceremonies.<\/p>\n

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Crystal Palace\u2019s alternative strips have often featured sashes over the years (Laurence Griffiths\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 20th century, their use expanded into beauty pageants, ceremonial roles and protest movements, functioning as a visible declaration of identity, honour or cause. The sash\u2019s visual form relates to heraldry. In medieval Europe, coats of arms often featured a diagonal stripe called a bend: a clear, recognisable symbol on a shield. Heraldry emerged in the 12th century to identify individuals in battle or tournaments using consistent colours and motifs. It became a hereditary system of signalling lineage and allegiance.\u201d<\/p>\n

The north west of England\u2019s connection to the sash does not stop with Burnley and Bolton \u2014 it predates them. Before Burnley\u2019s royal seal of approval, Everton, whose home kits are now royal blue, can claim to be one of the first football clubs in the world to have used a sash motif. In 1881, an all-black home shirt with a red stripe running through it earned the team, then known as St. Domingo FC, the nickname \u2018The Black Watch\u2019 given its similarity to that specific regiment of the British Army.<\/p>\n

In 2021, 140 years after the original \u2018Black Watch\u2019 strip had been worn, a version of it returned to Goodison Park when Danish kit manufacturers Hummel took inspiration from the 1881-82 shirt for the 2021-22 away jersey, which featured a burnt orange sash. The orange colour was preferred to red, given it would have drawn close comparisons to fierce rivals Liverpool.<\/p>\n

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In 2021, Everton experienced a \u2018Black Watch\u2019 revival (Alex Livesey\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

This upcoming Premier League season will see the return of the sash when Manchester City turn out in their new home kits made by Puma. It is the first time the club will wear a sash on their regular-season home shirts after club legends like Colin Bell iconically wore single-stripe away shirts back in the 1970s, the same decade in which Crystal Palace debuted their own well-known versions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The reason for the increase in the production of sash kits in the 1970s was down to advances in technology. \u201cThe advent of sublimation printing on polyester kits in 1970s made such designs much easier and more affordable to produce,\u201d Professor Groves explains.<\/p>\n

It is not known where City first took the inspiration for the sash from \u2014 they have also had a number of sashed alternative strips in the last 30 years \u2014 but coincidentally, they hosted River Plate, whose shirt and crest both traditionally feature a red sash, at Maine Road for a friendly in 1952.<\/p>\n

The four-time Copa Libertadores and 38-time Argentinian champions themselves have put the sash on the map. They first repped it in 1905 through to 1910, briefly abandoned it in favour of striped shirts, then made a return to the sash they are now synonymous with in 1930, and they have barely looked back.<\/p>\n

There are multiple theories when it comes to the origin story of River Plate\u2019s sash. One version says they took inspiration from carnival floats, another says they used the sash to distinguish themselves from other teams, and another says it was a nod to Genoa, Italy, where many people settled in Buenos Aires from, with some involved in the club.<\/p>\n

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River Plate\u2019s traditional kit design has long incorporated a white shirt with a red sash (Gabriel Bouys\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Peru are also known for the red sash, which they first wore circa 1935. In 1936, they competed at the Olympics in Berlin, Germany, wearing the famous red and white from which they get their La Blanquirroja (the white and red) nickname.<\/p>\n

The diagonal stripe has been used by countless teams around the world and was even adopted by next summer\u2019s joint men\u2019s World Cup hosts, the United States. According to James Brown, vice president at the Society for American Soccer History (fittingly abbreviated to S.A.S.H), the U.S. men\u2019s national team first wore a striped kit at the 1948 Olympic Games in London. They also wore a sash when famously beating England 1-0 in the 1950 World Cup in Brazil and repeated the design ahead of their rematch at the 2010 tournament in South Africa.<\/p>\n

Landing on definitive stories as to why certain teams began to wear a sash kit is not straightforward. Take La Liga side Rayo Vallecano, who introduced a red sash into their kit designs from 1949.<\/p>\n

\u201cWord on the street is that it was a tribute to River Plate,\u201d says Paul Reidy, an Irish journalist living in Madrid, where Rayo are based. \u201cBut a lot of people say that\u2019s not actually true. The big River Plate team with (Alfredo) Di Stefano, called La Machina (the machine), were doing their thing in the 1940s and they came to Europe in the 1950s. By then, Rayo were already playing with the diagonal sash.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other theory is that Atletico Madrid said: \u2018You need to incorporate some red in your kit because we\u2019re helping you out\u2019. A historian called Juan Jimenez Mancha writes in his book, The Origins of Rayo Vallecano, that there\u2019s no paper trail that takes you back to the time to know precisely.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe romantic thing is that it is in homage to the great River Plate team of the 40s. I like that story but I\u2019m not sure how true it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Top photo: Getty Images; design: Demetrius Robinson)<\/p>\n

Kitted Out is part of a partnership with VW Tiguan. The Athletic maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This article is part of our\u00a0Kitted Out series, an exploration of the impact of soccer kits on culture…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2026],"tags":[1784,7,1785,3372,3373,156],"class_list":{"0":"post-117774","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-culture","9":"tag-football","10":"tag-memorabilia-collectibles","11":"tag-premier-league","12":"tag-soccer","13":"tag-sports-business"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/114657114572836214","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117774\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}