On Sunday, as Lionel Messi and the Argentine national team stood on the podium in Qatar in front of their World Cup trophy, the general mood was one of joy and admiration, though in some corners of the internet a few viewers had noticed a detail that had them raising their eyebrows.
Why had the gold statuette arrived on the field in a logo-bedecked steel-toned Louis Vuitton trunk?
The same reason that before the final game, Qatar had hosted what was billed as “the world’s biggest fashion show,” with looks by more than 150 different designers from 50 countries, all of it orchestrated by the former French Vogue editor Carine Roitfeld.
When it comes to cultural influence, fashion and sports have increasingly teamed up to be the power forwards of the game.
Both offer a shared language spoken across the world, communicated in an instant. And in 2022, the relationship reached a new level. One driven by the tangles of social media, the growth of influencer and sneaker culture and a pandemic-spurred shift in cultural consumption. Something more essential has been going on. When you start looking, the connections are everywhere, creating a new root system that’s shaping our sense of self.
