Behind every new soccer kit these days is a detailed story, and the new primary kit that the United States women’s national team will wear at this year’s World Cup is unabashed with its narrative: the U.S. is the epicenter of women’s soccer.
The look bucks the usual trend of a plain-white primary kit for the United States. The white base remains, but laid over it is a pattern of spots best described as a paint splatter. Nike designers were inspired as much by the visuals of a popular art movement as they were the story behind it.
“Specifically, the team were inspired by abstract expressionism, which is the international art movement that started in the 1940s,” Charlotte Harris, a senior women’s apparel designer at Nike, told The Equalizer. “It’s when the epicenter of art shifted from Europe to the U.S., which we think is really interesting because that’s similarly what the USA team has done for women’s soccer.”
The U.S. has been a leading women’s soccer country since the Americans won the first official FIFA-endorsed Women’s World Cup in 1991. In 2019, the Americans won a fourth World Cup title by four European teams in their four knockout-round games, emerging victorious from a group of seven other European teams in the quarterfinals.
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