Last week, French fashion house Louis Vuitton announced a partnership with Real Madrid, establishing a formal association between arguably the world’s most recognisable luxury clothing brand and European football’s most storied club.
Louis Vuitton is not the first luxury label to make the crossover into the sport.
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Manchester City announced an agreement with Italy’s C.P. Company in 2024, which became their official fashionwear partner. That followed the club’s long-term deal with Dsquared², which started in 2016 before ending in their treble-winning 2023 season, where City players and manager Pep Guardiola would arrive at away matches in the Champions League wearing outfits made by that designer brand.
It is not just City, though — there are countless examples of similar deals in the Premier League.
Tottenham Hotspur’s victorious Europa League squad arrived at the stadium for that final last month wearing suits designed by Kiton, the Italian company that has been the club’s official formalwear partner since 2023. Their north London neighbours Arsenal have recently looked more locally for style inspiration, collaborating with Labrum London, whose founder Foday Dumbuya is an Arsenal supporter, on last season’s away kit and an accompanying lifestyle collection.
It is increasingly common around wider Europe, too.
In Italy’s Serie A, Juventus have partnered with Loro Piana since 2021, and Milan collaborated with Off-White for last season’s fourth kit. Madrid themselves previously had an association with Zegna, so they are not breaking new ground in collaborating with an esteemed designer brand.
This new deal is reportedly worth up to €7million (£5.9m; $8.1m at current rates), although a Real Madrid source — who did not wish to be named as they did not have permission to discuss its terms — described that figure as “optimistic”.
Either way, the prestige of Louis Vuitton, one of the world’s most recognisable symbols of luxury in fashion, is singular.
Milan forward Santiago Gimenez in last season’s fourth kit, designed by Off-White (Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images)
“These have been happening for years now, it shows a shift on both sides,” says sports business consultant and journalist Daniel-Yaw Miller. “Not just in the way clubs see themselves, but in how brands see themselves.
“There’s so much synergy between iconic fashion brands and football clubs. They’re huge cultural entities with so much history and heritage — like how fashion houses have their heritage tied to collections, football clubs have so much history tied to their kits, aesthetic and badges over time. It’s the same as how fashion houses look at patterns and designs over time.”
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Louis Vuitton is no stranger to the world of football either. It created a commemorative ball for the 1998 World Cup in its homeland of France and has designed the tournament trophy’s travelling case since 2010.
American music artist Pharrell Williams has served as its men’s creative director since 2023, and football stars including Jude Bellingham, Marcus Thuram, Jadon Sancho, Jules Kounde and Madrid’s marquee summer 2025 signing Trent Alexander-Arnold were in attendance at his first runway show. Williams even included a pair of “football trainers” in their spring/summer collection this year, retailing at an eyewatering £885 ($1,200).
Five years before their current owners at Qatar Sports Investment bought Paris Saint-Germain in 2011, the Ligue 1 club released an away kit inspired by Louis Vuitton’s colours and design — albeit without an official link to the brand.
Given their shared home city and emphasis on fashion, PSG may also have been a prime candidate for the company’s first official club partnership. Still, Miller says Madrid’s prestige and the large personal brands of their star players make it an obvious match.
“Louis Vuitton has always had small relationships in sport,” says Miller. “Whether that’s creating trophy cases or limited releases around prestigious occasions. But a few years ago, LVMH, Louis Vuitton’s parent company, decided that sport would be its one major cultural push.
“You saw that with their strategy around the Olympics (held in Paris and across France last August), where they were a premium sponsor and paid big amounts to have their brand visible. They paid (a reported) $1billion to sponsor Formula One for 10 years. But if you want to show up on a global stage, you want to be associated with football.
“They started working similarly to how they did with Formula One, informally dressing Jude Bellingham for certain events before making him an official ambassador, like they did with Lewis Hamilton (who became an ambassador for Dior, another brand under the LVMH banner, in 2024). Then, if you want to be in football, there’s no bigger entity than Real Madrid.”
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Bellingham partnered with Louis Vuitton last summer, following his England team-mate Jack Grealish signing a seven-figure deal to become a Gucci ambassador in 2022. Bellingham — who is also linked to Skims, a clothing brand founded by Kim Kardashian — was the third major athlete to sign as a “friend of the house” after current Wimbledon and French Open tennis champion (and known madridista) Carlos Alcaraz and NBA basketball star Victor Wembanyama, who was raised in a suburb of Paris. Last year, fellow Real Madrid fan Rafael Nadal combined with long-time rival Roger Federer for a photoshoot organised by Louis Vuitton in the Italian Dolomites.
Jude Bellingham for Louis Vuitton. The Maison and @Pharrell are pleased to welcome English footballer @BellinghamJude as the newest Friend of the House — embarking on a collaborative adventure in Menswear.#JudeBellingham #PharrellWilliams #LouisVuitton pic.twitter.com/KwIJolDiNg
— Louis Vuitton (@LouisVuitton) August 16, 2024
Bellingham is one of several superstar players at Madrid whose celebrity has transcended football. Kylian Mbappe is one of the world’s most famous athletes. Fellow forward Vinicius Junior is one of the faces of the Brazil national team with more than 50million Instagram followers, and newcomer Alexander-Arnold, who is frequently spotted at major fashion and sporting events, also represent much more from a branding perspective.
“Madrid have a lot of players who are loved by Gen Z audiences,” says Jordan Clarke, founder of Footballer Fits, an Instagram page with more than 800,000 followers which celebrates the relationship between football and fashion.
“Louis Vuitton is such a prestigious brand, and they’ve historically not targeted these audiences. But I think with the likes of Vinicius, Bellingham, Mbappe, (their team-mate Eduardo) Camavinga, they’re reaching new audiences with the love people have for these athletes. It’s a valid seal of approval for these brands for the youth.
“The athletes of today, especially those high-profile Madrid players, are almost creatives themselves. They’re going to be posting content onto their socials wearing Louis Vuitton, taken from the players themselves on their iPhones. That makes it a player-backed brand.”
Louis Vuitton will hope to capitalise on Madrid players’ global profiles (Louis Vuitton x Real Madrid Partnership Images)
This summer’s Club World Cup in the United States will be the first opportunity for the record 15-time European champions to show off this new collaboration.
According to the blurb in the accompanying press release, “the collection will be worn by the teams and includes tailored garments, shoes, accessories and luggage,” and the items will be worn at major travel opportunities and events.
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LVMH has reported first-quarter revenues of €20.3billion (£17.3bn/$23.5bn at current rates) last month, down two per cent on the same period in 2024. Part of that is due to a five per cent sales decrease in the company’s fashion and leather goods division, with Europe being the only market that posted growth (two per cent). According to Miller, pushing the brand in front of new demographics is how LVMH is trying to drive a new wave of enthusiasm around its flagship brand.
“For a long time, luxury fashion houses have operated on the belief that the exclusivity of their brand will drive enough business to generate profit, despite the high price point,” says Miller. “But in the last three or four years, luxury brands have struggled to keep up. Sales and profits have been declining, so LVMH is looking for new cultural avenues to drive excitement.”
In front of a new audience in America, perhaps there’s no better time for Louis Vuitton to announce the partnership as Madrid aim to become the first winners of FIFA’s revamped, greatly expanded and rescheduled Club World Cup.
(Top photo: Madrid’s Eder Militao, Thibaut Courtois and Vinicius Jr in their new suits; Louis Vuitton x Real Madrid Partnership Images)
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