In 1999, Stine Goya moved to London to study at Central Saint Martins. Between long seminars and studio classes, the budding Danish designer was falling for the city in all its late-90s, slightly scruffy glory: in smoky pubs, sweaty dancefloors, and Sunday afternoons spent nursing a hangover in greasy spoons, with the inevitable football match flickering on whatever screen happened to be nearby. She might have been less concerned with the drama unfolding on the pitch, yet she was fascinated by everything around it: the camaraderie, the collective anticipation, and the eclectic characters it drew together.
Fast-forward almost three decades and Goya is now revisiting those memories for her second collaboration with Umbro. While their first collection brought her distinctly feminine approach to football’s classic kit codes, Where We Meet looks beyond the game to celebrate the spaces where fans connect outside of the stadium.
It feels fitting, then, that when I log on to chat with Goya to talk about the collection, I’m wearing a Dulwich Hamlet football shirt. They’re my local team – although, if I’m being honest, my reasons for wearing it have less to do with football, and considerably more to do with its bubblegum pink palette. Goya clocks it immediately, and there’s a sort of acknowledgement shared between two women connected to London’s art and fashion scenes, wearing football shirts for reasons that have nothing to do with match day. And that, as it turns out, is exactly where Goya’s head is at with Where We Meet.
Rather than recreating a polished vision of 90s Britain, Goya looked to the everyday spaces where people actually gather. “For me, the collection was so much about the spaces that were really inspiring me, and how some of those spaces were never designed to be beautiful, but they became beautiful because of the people who were in them,” she says. She was particularly struck by the way football shirts appeared in London nightlife. “DJs would wear football shirts while performing, and that was very new to me because that’s not a thing in Denmark, at least not at that time,” she recalls. “Women DJs were wearing football shirts with pleated skirts or something unexpected, which was really cool to me.”
The collection was so much about the spaces that were really inspiring me, and how some of those spaces were never designed to be beautiful, but they became beautiful because of the people who were in them.
Stine Goya
The result is a collection that finds romance in the imperfect yet familiar details that make your local feel like home. Bleached wallpapers inform lace-like prints, while she took cues from lace tablecloths for team crests, and bathroom-wall declarations become the basis of hand-drawn graphics. “These grungy spaces, they had such a positive energy and sense of community; it becomes so human. It’s a place where people can let loose and be spontaneous, and a little bit messy, but it makes it so beautiful,” Goya says.
That handmade quality is also fundamental to the brand’s wider practice. “For us, we’ve always worked with prints in-house where we do everything. Everything is handmade,” she explains. “For example, I am sitting in our kitchen right now because our meeting room downstairs is filled with a huge canvas and paints all over the floor because they’re working on some prints,” she laughs. “It’s very much how things are done here.”
It’s a process that stretches back to her own time at Central Saint Martins, where she spent much of her time in the print room screen printing “the old school way”. That same hands-on approach remains visible in the collection today. “I think it’s so important to have yourself as a part of the process. We don’t just go out and buy a print; it’s part of the storytelling for us.”
It’s so important to have yourself as a part of the process. We don’t just go out and buy a print; it’s part of the storytelling for us.
Stine Goya
The collection also plays with the relationship between football and gender. Goya opted for an oversized fit herself – admitting she orders her own shirts in “an extra extra large” for her desired look – while a slimmer, baby tee-style silhouette offers an alternative to the traditional football shirt. For her, that fluidity feels particularly relevant to the sport’s emotional culture. “We talked a bit about this idea of how much emotion is in football,” she says. “I think so much of football relates to these very heteronormative, ‘masculine’ traits, but then there’s this very emotional kind of spirit around it.” That tension, she says, creates an interesting “grey area of gender” that the brand wanted to explore in the delicate nature of her designs.
The same sense of movement and contradiction informed the campaign, which stars Danish professional dancer Didde-Mie Lykke. Rather than casting a model, Goya says the decision came about organically while brainstorming with Umbro. She had seen Didde-Mie before and was drawn to “her energy and just the way she can move through a room”, as well as the way she dresses. Lykke’s own history also felt connected to the collection’s themes: she has travelled to the UK to dance since she was 15, spending years flying back and forth and living with other dancers as she tried to make it in the industry. “I think that’s the grit we wanted to capture in the campaign,” she adds.
Across the collection, Where We Meet is interested in the same thing that made Goya fall for these spaces in the first place: the people who occupy them. Football shirts become less about allegiance to a particular team and more about the ways people choose to wear, style and inhabit them. In Goya’s world, that means a football shirt can be a uniform, a symbol of belonging, or simply something that makes you feel good.
Stine Goya x Umbro is available to shop now.
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