Season #1
Editor, writer and football fanatic Felicia Pennant knows the score. Her newly released Season is a football and fashion title for women who love the game but are often disregarded or undermined by other football-focused media. Throughout the mag, powder pink spreads meet Fred Perry tops, Adidas socks and match-day scarves, and a team of interviewees share football memories, anecdotes and treasured t-shirts.
“Women like me who are into fashion and football are more common than you’d think,” Felicia tells me, citing how 25% of fans attending the Premier League are women. “We are often overlooked or sexualised in the football landscape so I wanted to document and celebrate female fandom creatively.”
Fashion shoots are sporty, down-to-earth and easy-going, like a feature crisply shot by Claire Pepper and artfully styled by Rickardo Mattocks-Maxwell (above). I like the to-the-point simplicity that defines the whole publication: an article smartly exploring the various cuts of ladies football shirts is matched with elegant, analytical imagery (below).
Interviewees include FKA twigs’ makeup artist Naoko Scintu (who shares her t-shirt collection, above), and stylist Verity Parker, known for her work for British Vogue and Russh (below).
I also enjoy the way that Season brings together other blogs and zines that deal with a similar topic, which hits home the fact that there’s a lot of women fans out there feeling underrepresented. An interview with the editor of a photography zine called Girlfans cites ‘Buttoned Up’ (a Penguin book by Fantastic Man) and the late Green Soccer Journal as influences – and it goes on to point out that there are few women’s titles that deal with what are traditionally considered men’s themes and styles. It’s a shame that independents dealing with topics like football in an unconventional, fashion-focused way often leave out women’s perspectives – as independent magazines so often have the power to redefine the way that something is represented, sex and gender should be thrown into the mix as well.
It’s something I think about often – I’m very drawn to Fantastic Man and Port’s content, style and approach and I wonder why titles like these are still defining themselves in terms of sex in such a stringent way. Maxine Peake on the cover of the latest issue of ‘men’s mag’ Jocks & Nerds shows that magazines don’t have to be so categorical when it comes to representing different sexes. Perhaps one day we won’t need a magazine just for women football fans because publishers will be representing both sexes and a multiplicity of genders with their editorial output—even if the magazine deals with topics that are traditionally considered for men or for women.
Half-time asides aside: I find that Season’s out-of-the-ordinary sense of story-telling is especially intriguing, as its content is so honest and open. At the back, a series of interviews with daughters about their dads and football memories is especially telling (above). Many of the interviewees are fashion bloggers, which links Season’s two topics together nicely once again. The whole magazine stresses and unpicks the way that childhood experiences watching games has had such a powerful effect on a lot of fashion industry experts and enthusiasts. Season explores how the two seemingly desperate areas are intimately linked culturally: it celebrates how football has become fashion statement and also inspired contemporary collections (below).
When it comes to its art direction and eye, I can definitely see Season growing into something popular and subtly influential like London-based LAW. It documents a sub-culture that’s not often discussed or represented in mainstream or independent media, and in that sense, Season is a sure-fire game-changer.