A Moment in Time, Preserved in Polyester

Rory Smith

The temperature drops perceptibly as Doug Bierton discreetly sweeps the bracelet on his left wrist over a wall-mounted sensor and enters the vault. Like access to this locked room, the climate inside it is strictly controlled. To the uninitiated, this might seem excessive. Its contents are not jewels, or watches, or the treasures of some lost civilization. They are, instead, soccer jerseys: roughly 6,500 of them, hanging from great metal racks.

This is just a tiny fraction of the stock that Biertons company, Classic Football Shirts, holds at any given time. In the cavernous warehouse that surrounds the vault, there are at any given moment more than 1 million jerseys, hats and other pieces of apparel. This room is for those items Bierton cannot bear to part with, the pieces including match-worn editions of some of the most iconic jerseys in history he has deemed too precious to sell.

At first glance, it does not seem like that. The overall impression is of an overstuffed closet: a jumble of man-made fabrics and a riot of color, all vivid reds, lurid yellows and royal blues.

Bierton, though, can find any particular jersey in just a few seconds. He has memorized the provenance, the background and the story of each one. He knows the stains, and the defects, that prove their authenticity.

He has been in the business of buying and selling soccer jerseys for almost 20 years, since he founded Classic Football Shirts, an online platform for trading vintage editions, with a friend in 2006. At heart, though, he remains an enthusiast, a collector and a fan.

Bierton sees the vault as many things. It is a store of future value for his business. It is an archive of soccer history, a resource that can be used for museums, exhibitions or television documentaries. It is a monument to a collectors obsession. Most of all, though, the polyester treasures it contains are a way of telling a story. Each jersey acts as a repository of memory.

At the end of a recent vacation in London, Ilka Husmann and her daughter Eila found themselves in one of the world_s greatest cities with a day to spare. They wanted to crown the trip with a highlight, Husmann said, before returning home to Germany. Eila knew exactly what that should be, even if it meant a two-hour train ride to Manchester.

_We had already been to the Classic Football Shirts store in London, Husmann said. But she wanted to come to the one in Manchester, too._ In her hand, she held the fruits of their trip: half a dozen vintage items, including Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool jerseys from the early 1990s.

In the tribal world of English soccer, the haul bordered on heresy: So deep are the rivalries between those clubs that it would be taboo for one person to wear the jersey of more than one of them. That does not concern Elia. _I wear them as streetwear,_ she said. The design, and the era they conjure, are more important to her than the affiliation.

Classic Football Shirts has noticed more and more customers like her in its stores in recent years, as vintage soccer jerseys first bled into streetwear and then earned the influencer stamp of approval.

The trend may have reached its peak last year, when Kim Kardashian decided to go for a walk in a 1997 Roma jersey and her ex-husband, Ye, appeared in a wholly forgettable Portsmouth goalkeeper shirt. Drake, Addison Rae and Robert Downey Jr., among others, have endorsed teams from Juventus to Celtic.

Classic Football Shirts does not quite know why this has happened, but it is not complaining. When Bierton and a friend, Matt Dale, founded the company in 2006, it was part passion project and part side hustle for two students attracted to older and more offbeat jerseys than the new ones being sold by clubs every year.

In the early days, they would spend hours online chasing unwanted jerseys; scouring secondhand stores and market stalls; and arriving unannounced at retailers and happily heaving their unwanted stock into a van.

Now, in addition to two permanent stores, they have run pop-ups in Berlin, Tokyo and New York. They acquire stock directly from the companies that manufacture jerseys. And they sort the hundreds more vintage editions that still arrive at their warehouse every day, unearthed from the backs of closets and private collections. The company authenticates them, passes them under the expert eyes of its valuation _gurus_ and then sells them on.

That may just be the start. Last year, a private equity firm, The Chernin Group, bought a stake in Classic Football Shirts. In September, former U.S. striker Alex Morgan, soccer commentator Stu Holden and actor (and Wrexham co-owner) Rob McElhenny invested, too. The company_s plans include opening stores across the United States.