Wednesday, October 22, 2008

The Good, The Bad, The WTF

I've held out as long as I can. This is one of those shirts that always exists right on the fringe of this weekly effort. Everyone knows that it is out there, but I just didn't want to acknowledge it. There are so many other horrors out there that needed to be seen. Sadly, none of them came to me this week.

Yes, it's the Arsenal away shirt from '91-'93. It's hideous. How so? Let me counts the ways.


1. First, the obvious. That green and yellow print. I have no idea where adidas pulled that idea from, but damn, is it ugly. Most of the time when I come across this shirt, I think "Flying V". But sometimes, I think it was inspired by African tribal design. Kind of like that 10-year-old tattoo you now regret.

2. The collar. If you are going to go with these colors in this pattern, don't spice things up with some red and black at the top. It's already bad, don't make things worse.

3. The sponsor. Once again, this is one of those times that the shirt sponsor gets hosed. On the red shirts, JVC was a nice complement to the rest of the shirt. Here, it is buried in pattern. Plus, they could have at least lined up the V so that it ran with the pattern.

4. That badge. Now, I'm no fan of the current Arsenal badge, with it's two-toned, halved background. But this badge was pure pansy, when it wasn't being too busy. If the club went back just the cannon, then I would be happy. Maybe with the AFC cannonballs on the side as well.

Of course, I'm not your head of household decisionmaker. If this is a shirt you have to have, even in a pretty small size, then eBay is the place for you.

Happy bidding, morons.

1 comment:

The Fan's Attic said...

The "V"s are in reference to the "sacred feminine". There was a part of "The Da Vinci Code" left on the editing room floor discussing this.