For a lifestyle collection with PUMA KING, British design studio ACID FC, led by Ed Cowburn, has created an FC St. Pauli shirt that recalls Victorian floral wallpaper. Some of its motifs, however, began life in the district itself.
For the first draft of the new shirt, Ed Cowburn photographed graffiti tags around the St. Pauli district. The founder of British design studio ACID FC initially worked them into the artwork. The finished shirt no longer carries them as they were: the photographs became the starting point for a set of original FCSP tags.
The shirt is the centrepiece of a lifestyle collection that FC St. Pauli have released with PUMA KING and ACID FC. Alongside it come a black zip-up hoodie and a black T-shirt, both with a large skull on the back. The shirt’s own point of reference once hung in a London dining room.
William Morris and the Pattern Behind the St. Pauli Shirt
The British designer William Morris (1834–1896) is regarded as a defining figure of the Arts and Crafts movement, which in the second half of the 19th century answered industrial mass manufacturing with craftsmanship and patterns drawn from nature. For the dining room of his London home, he chose one of his own wallpapers, “Pimpernel” from 1876: large tulip heads, spiralling stems and long leaves, block-printed by hand.
For ACID FC, “Pimpernel” was a stylistic reference rather than a template. The ACID FC x PUMA KING Jersey is a long-sleeved V-neck shirt covered from collar to hem in flowers, leaves, skulls, moths and graffiti tags in shades of brown, pink and green. Patterned sleeve stripes carry the design through, while the club crest and white ACID FC lettering sit on the chest.
Graffiti Tags From St. Pauli in the Shirt Design
Leaving the photographed tags unchanged was never the plan. “We did not want to simply copy the work of graffiti artists—even when their names are unknown,” as FC St. Pauli put it in their description of the shirt.
Hand-drawn FCSP lettering also appears on the other two pieces in the collection. On the backs of the hoodie and T-shirt, it surrounds the large skull alongside flowers and leaves. The fronts are kept understated, carrying only the PUMA logo and the club crest.
ACID FC and Its Partnership With FC St. Pauli
At ACID FC, founder Ed Cowburn and Adam McNichol worked on the design of the shirt. The Leeds-based studio’s previous projects include a leisurewear collection for Leeds United, kits for the Paris club Red Star FC and skateboard decks for Oakland Roots in California. The new collection takes its name from the PUMA King, the football boot PUMA has made since 1968.
This is not the first time ACID FC have worked with FC St. Pauli. An earlier joint collection was dedicated to Hamburg’s electro, techno and rave scene of the 1990s and to clubs such as Unit. “As long-term fans of St Pauli we wanted to focus on the link between the club and musical culture of Hamburg,” Cowburn said at the time. This time, it is about walls: those of the neighbourhood and those in Morris’s dining room. The shirt, hoodie and T-shirt are available from FC St. Pauli’s online shop.
