Kappa

Italian sportswear company Kappa are known today for their innovative and stylish sportswear but the firm’s origins emerge from the slightly less glamorous world of underwear and socks. Maglificio Calzificio Torinese (MCT) was originally founded in the Turin of 1916. In the 1950s the firm created a product range entitled K - Kontrollen that focused on superior quality items. The range was a great success and MCT decided to create a new brand, Robe di Kappa, to spearhead their new venture into casual clothing and outerwear.

Sports apparel followed towards the end of the 1970s under the leadership of Marco Boglione. Initially their success came from their athletics clothing (Carl Lewis, Florence Griffith-Joyner and Edwin Moses all won Olympic medals wearing Kappa) before the company targeted the football market.

Juventus (Kappa’s local side) have sported Kappa along with such legends of European football as Roma, Barcelona and AC Milan.

Other sports as diverse as skiing, basketball, fencing and rugby have also seen Kappa apparel worn on their fields of play.

Although the brand and their iconic logo (comprising of a naked man and woman sitting back to back) have been, not surprisingly, most seen in their native Italy the company are known in the UK primarily for their groundbreaking and incredibly stylish kits for Tottenham Hotspur, Blackburn Rovers and Queens Park Rangers as well as the Welsh national side. Many of these shirts were part of the lycra-based Kombat range of very tight fitting shirts that was launched at Euro 2000 by the Italian national side. Designed to thwart the shirt-pulling phase that threatened to disrupt football in the late 1990s these shirts, although not popular with more rotund replica-wearing supporters, were clear trendsetters for the slim fit kits we see today.