Martine Rose remains the best of the best when it comes to blending different subcultures into one defining fashion moment. For Autumn/Winter 2021, the British-Jamaican menswear designer taps into football culture, the turn-of-the-century club scene, punk, and playfully bad taste. Launched on the heels of an English match victory against long-time rival Germany, Rose’s menswear line undermines the idea of the hyper-masculine English footballer via outrageous garments. From red-leather chaps to flared tracksuit trousers, Martine Rose AW21 doesn’t shy away from the kinky and subversive.

Rose’s collection excels at mix-and-match fashion. Though the lookbook shows complementary pairs of tops, trousers, and coats, it’s easy to imagine alternate sets being created from such singular pieces. Monogram-print jeans and a comically oversized beige coat are lightened by the addition of a pastel button-up shirt. In another look, a tailored suit is dressed down thanks to sequined details. Clever layering takes the ensemble over the top: an oversized shirt and a neon-green turtleneck ensure there’s no mistaking this suit with formalwear. 

The turtleneck is a piece worthy of its own moment, and it gets one while layered under another of the collection’s unique suit jackets. The Day-Glo 80s hue is tamed by olive-green suiting that is doing double-duty to balance the electric top with flared tracksuit chaps. On paper, the outfit sounds like it couldn’t work. Yet the result is pleasing to the eye when viewed as rebelling against what’s considered ‘good taste’ and reveling in naffness.

While it is a menswear line, the collection includes a share of garments for the increasingly realized Martine Rose woman. A crushed-velvet suit in soft lilac invokes a retro-pajama vibe that cuts through the formalness of its tailoring. Martine Rose also borrows from SS20’s dominant theme of punk in the form of a red hairy-wool sweater, perfectly paired with matching leather pants. A Western-style belt buckle finishes the look, its engraving declaring “TRIUMPHANT”—a hopeful reference, perhaps, to England’s fate in the Euro 2020.

You don’t have to be a diehard football fan to appreciate Martine Rose’s take on the style and culture that surround the sport. Chaps certainly aren’t the first thing to come to mind when one thinks of football. But Rose’s spot-on styling and her engaging fusion of high- and low-brow culture make you wonder, “Why not?” After all, the Martine Rose man and woman look like they’re having all the fun.