Colorful trainers at the center of World Cup fashion CAIRO: Fashion and football often come together. Sometimes sports borrow something from fashion or vise versa. Some football players become even more inspiring than fashion icons, setting the trends for the upcoming seasons. With the World Cup 2006 kicking off, the world better be ready for some inspirational fashion, or on the contrary some outrageous stunts that thankfully won t make the transition from the football fields to the runways and finally to men s wardrobes. The history of this phenomenon is full of incidents where football inspired fashion and when fashion inspired football. In the final match of their group game during the 1998 World Cup, the Romanian team decided to show up with peroxide blond hair. So, during their game against Tunisia, the entire Romanian team was running around with bottle blonde hair and bright red uniforms, making them awfully bright. Luckily it didn't catch on, but in the following World Cup footballers got overly excited with their hair, short back and sides was out, and in was everything eccentric from skinhead to dreadlock. According to Aki Wantabe, the Japanese hair stylist of choice for football coaches, players use their hairstyles as a way to express their personality and individuality of the field. Wantabe told Reuters in 2002 that, "If you re trying to break into the big time, you change your hair style or color so you leap out from the other players on the field, not just with your skill but your look. England's David Beckham supported a "new look at the time, a customized Mohawk with a black stripe going through his blond hair, which became the unofficial hallmark of FIFA 2002. Remember Mexican goalkeeper Jorge Campos? Well, his skills on the court may be long forgotten, but his wonderfully colored, crowdedly patterned outfits are hard to forget. Compos actually designs his kits himself. As for this year, fashion spies point to multi-colored cross trainers. "All the colors of the rainbow are sure to be on show in Germany 2006 and the likes of Francesco Totti, David Beckham and Ronaldo will all be trying to outdo one another, according the MSN-hosted Road to the World Cup. Besides the players are the fans. Every World Cup brings with it the football jersey-wearing fad. T-shirt's with names like Ronaldinho, Figo and Zidane printed on the back suddenly appear every four years; even little jerseys for the girls. These are without a doubt going to resurface. The crowds at the matches go crazy with wild outfits and face paints. Even at the Cairo stadium during the African Cup, Egyptians were covering themselves in their national flags. In the World Cup in Berlin, however, expect a lot more outrageous attire, from string bikinis to wings.
