Premier League
The easiest club colour in London to wear, and the hardest to make interesting. Here is how to get it right.
The problem with royal blue
Chelsea have the opposite problem to most clubs on this site. Claret is rare, so West Ham fans have to hunt for it. Royal blue is everywhere — every high street, every workwear brand, half the jumpers in your wardrobe already. Nobody will ever look twice.
Which sounds easy and is actually the trap. If the colour is generic, the clothes have to do the work instead. The shade matters more than you think: too bright and it is a school jumper, too dark and it is Everton or Millwall. You want a true royal — deep, flat, no purple in it.
Then keep the white where the kit keeps it. Trim, laces, socks. Never a white top half. That is a shirt and everyone can see it.
Section 01 · Home
Deep royal as the base, white kept to the edges. The whole section is an argument about getting the shade right rather than getting more of it.
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adidas Originals
The kit ratio done in sportswear rather than menswear. Three white stripes on a blue shoulder give you the second colour in millimetres, not panels — same trick as the tipping, louder register. Collar down, always.
Fred Perry
The menswear version of the same idea. White tipping on a blue collar, and because the white is measured in millimetres it reads as detail rather than kit. Wears older and smarter than the adidas.
Lambswool knitwear
The one where shade does everything. Get a proper flat royal and it looks deliberate; get a slightly purple one and you look like you dressed in the dark. Worth paying for the right blue.
adidas
The shade is the whole point. Suede holds a true royal in a way leather never does — leather goes shiny and reads cheap. Three white stripes give you the trim without a single white panel.
Puma
The terrace trainer with the longest CV, and in royal blue with a white formstripe it is about as close to a Chelsea shoe as anything made without a badge on it. Softer shape than the Gazelle and it sits lower, which works better under a straight leg.
Section 02 · Away
The colours reversed. White leads, blue becomes the accent — and because royal blue is so common, this is the version nobody clocks at all. Which for some people is exactly the appeal.
Heavyweight cotton
Get a heavy one, 200gsm or over. A thin white tee under an overshirt looks like a vest, and that is a different look entirely.
Harrington
Navy rather than royal, deliberately. Two blues that nearly match is worse than one blue and one neutral. Let the polo be the blue.
adidas
Nothing about it says football until it is stood next to the blue polo. Then it does all the work of making that polo look intentional.
Section 03 · Classic away
Chelsea and yellow go back a long way, and it is the one change colour that actually gets remembered. It also breaks every rule on this page — loud, obvious, nothing subtle about it. Which is the fun of the classic away section.
Knitwear
Easier than it sounds if you keep everything else dark. Yellow jumper, navy or black everything, and it reads as a colour choice rather than a costume.
Cagoule
Terrace item that is not pretending to be anything else. Cheap enough to be honest, bright enough that people three rows back know exactly which end you are in.
adidas
A yellow trainer is a commitment. This is the shape that carries it, because the silhouette is old enough to make a bright colour look considered rather than like running shoes.
Prices and availability change constantly. Check the retailer’s page before you buy — that’s the price that counts.
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