Street football jersey, Inter’s jersey according to OTLN Studio

Giulia Pacciardi · 4 years ago

OTLN Studio was born from the minds of Alessio and Matteo, both Milanese, both graduates in design and with a common passion for graffiti.
Strongly attached to their city and to the two symbolic teams, Inter and Milan, they wanted to start from the first to create a project based on one of the trends of recent years, the combination of football and fashion.

Street football jersey, however, is not just a jersey, it is the graphic distortion of a tradition, it is the story of historical pitches, improvised pitches and all the nuances that characterize this sport and the city where the two boys fell in love with it.
We had a chat with them, we started from the beginning up to their last project.
Read here to find out more and take a look at the editorial.

How and from whom was OTLN Studio born?

It was born from Alessio and Matteo and from the first photo published for game on Instagram. But the truth is that the story starts a long time before. We were a group of friends writing on the walls. Always together, always around. And that’s where the path that led us to OTLN began.
Graffiti has taught us a lot, they have given us that extra gear, that hunger and that desire to improve that I think nothing else can give you.
Then over the years, for several reasons, everyone began to take their own working path. We both followed a more similar path, graduating in design at the University. During this time we decided to concentrate our energies officially under the name of OTLN, opening up our Instagram profile almost as a game. After some time, the first results arrived, until in two years, after completing our studies, it became our actual work, and we went from working at home to taking our studio in San Siro area.
We are happy and satisfied with what we have been able to achieve until today, but that is not enough: we are still very hungry, we want to grow and we hope one day to bring the whole team together in this reality.

The project you are most proud of, the one you wouldn’t do as you did and the one you absolutely would like to do?

Honestly, there is not a specific project, we are very proud of our path, every year we have improved and we have aimed to raise the level, also because we soon get bored of almost everything we do, today we live in a world where everything lasts very little, news and fashions are fast, constantly changing, so are we.
But having to choose, the ones that have excited us the most recently have been our collaborations with Google, Durex and adidas.
Arriving to collaborate with big brands is confirmation that we are working well. I think we would do everything in the same way, because we have always put the highest effort and we have always been convinced of our ideas, then mistakes and defeats are part of the game, in fact they are the ones that make you make a difference, in a fury of making mistakes comes the day that you find the right solution, the important thing is to learn from mistakes and not be afraid to experiment and get out of the standard.
“When you get it wrong you are on the right track.”
What would we absolutely like to do?
Right now we would like to design the entire streetwear collection by Inter only and bring it to the same hype level as the Paris Saint Germain.
But one of the things we’ve been carrying around for years is making a football pitch with our own graphics, like Pigalle in Paris, Otln in Milan.

What does your latest project “street football jersey” want to tell about?

It tells about Inter, our city and us. The goal was to make a football shirt that was “cool” to wear every day, in the square or in the evening with friends.
We wanted to do something unique that would allow you to show off your faith in a different and more fashionable way.
With this project we wanted to create something never seen before, a T-shirt that expressed the charm and history of nerozzuri colors, that followed the fashion and at the same time told about Milan, its streets and its traditions. From here we wanted to change the graphic rules of a football shirt.
What has influenced us the most is the passion and imagination that are celebrated behind street football, where every area, every field, has its own rules. Sometimes the outside doesn’t exist, it makes its way with the wall of the condominium. Sometimes to score you have to hit a pole of light, or the soccer goal is the door of an abandoned store. It doesn’t count the result, it counts humiliating the adversary and inventing new games, dreaming one day of making them in a real stadium. Zero schemes, only talent and imagination.

For some years now, football jerseys have been living a new life very close to streetwear. Why did you want to focus on this item?

First of all, we’re football fans and both of us have been playing since we were little. So the first reason is definitely the passion and emotion that binds us to this world. For us, football is not a passing fashion, it’s always been lifestyle, you’d finish the match on a Sunday and you’d show up in the square in your representative suit. We also think that the football jersey is one of the most iconic accessories that has ever been invented. Because it carries more stories, such as those of clubs and players that wore it.
Besides all this, for a couple of years now we have noticed that jerseys had become a fashion accessory, were no longer worn only on the field, but increasingly appeared in rap/trap videos, on the street or even in fashion shows.
We already had this idea in mind for a long time, in the last year we have designed many, but none has ever convinced us to the end, to say ok let’s do it seriously.
Until this summer we designed this one and we immediately realized that it was the one to focus on.

How does your jersey differ from those that we have seen on show or that we find on the market?

We think we have brought something completely new, both in terms of idea and design. We have changed the rules and distorted the positioning of the various elements that make up a football shirt.
For example, we moved the club’s crest to the bottom right of the back so that you can see it when you lean on the scooter or it comes out of the jacket when your girlfriend wears it.
This is perhaps one of the most distinctive features of the whole project. Another idea came to mind when we looked at all the historical uniforms of the Inter, the one designed for the UEFA Cup in 1998 struck us immediately, from that we took inspiration to insert the horizontal stripes on the front.
In general, we wanted to make something cool that represented our style and vision, we risked and we are glad to have done so.

You are both from Milan, how did this city inspired your work?

We are from Milan, more precisely from Niguarda and Gorla.
San Siro, on the other hand, is the area where we have a graphic studio since two years and immediately involved us and inspired us a lot as a place, it is a neighborhood of different shades, where popular areas compete and contrast with more popular places, but everything goes into the background when you arrive at the stadium square.
When we are not in the studio we are always around, and I can tell you that the street inspires us a lot, we observe everything, streets, buildings, shops, people and writings on the walls, everything can make us find the right inspiration.
In general, we are deeply connected to our city and directly or indirectly it influences our work.
Returning to the San Siro district, we think that the stadium is the real value added, something unique in the world, is able to excite you even just looking at it from the outside.

You started with the Inter jersey, a project that you are going to extend to other teams?

So let’s start from the fact that we support one Milan and the other Inter, but there was a choice to make and this time it ended up in nerazzurri colors.
For sure, we wanted to know the city, the fans and the traditions that surround the club we would have chosen.
The Nerazzurri picture is something as fascinating as I think all the stories that are celebrated behind the biggest clubs in the world.
We would like to extend the project to other teams, being able to represent the distinctive features of each square and the stories of the various teams, creating a street collection of the uniforms of each club, all different and unpredictable, would be a devastating collection. It’s definitely a stimulating project, and some surprises are actually ready.

Question that will naturally be asked, it will be possible to buy it?

These are two unique pieces, but they were not designed for sale, also because we sincerely do not have the rights.
We thought about this project in order to get involved and show what we can do.
For us it would be a dream to see them worn on the street, so we hope one day to be able to collaborate with the brands concerned and thus succeed in realizing them for a possible sale.
Finally, we want to thank all the guys who took part in this project, without this super team we would not have made it.