How did the Les Vêtements De Football event go in Paris

Founded by Jules Ouaki after the Second World War II, Tati was undoubtedly one of the most important businesses in France. Ouaki, who had come to France from Tunisia years before, had named Tati after his mother and dreamed of a shop that would truly be for everyone. "Les plus bas prix" was the slogan of the shop in Barbès, one of the most multiethnic neighbourhoods in the heart of Paris, at the foot of Montmartre. Tati never got over the two terrible years that COVID stood in the way of her dream and closed the last shop, the shop in Barbès, in the summer of 2020

From then on, Youssouf Fofana, founder of the cultural movement Maison Chateau Rouge, took over the shop to create the Union de La Jeunesse International, a cultural centre created with the aim of providing culture and bringing the community together, including through fashion. UJI came to prominence last year when it was chosen as the launch site for the collaboration between Maison Chateau Rouge and Jordan Brand. An event that is still talked about in the city and that represents the evocative power of Fofana's work and the importance of a certain form of social integration that lives on in the French capital. A discourse that, incidentally, also applies to the French national football team: France finished the game with a formation made up of 10/11 second-generation French footballers, from Mbappe to Kolo Muani and Tchouameni. A very strong and very young team that will represent the Blues for at least the next 10 years and powerfully symbolises the development of the French people - as, incidentally, does the 2018 World Cup-winning national team

It did not take long for this to be pointed out on social media in obviously racist tones. Those lamenting an ethnic substitution completely ignore what football has always been and what it should be above all: a cultural force

For the presentation of Les Vêtements De Football 2017 - 2022, a book that proposes a different vision of football and a less clear and stereotypical understanding of it, nss decided to work precisely with UIJ to create a community moment at the World Cup final. A collective look at the game, where there was an obvious French majority as well as scattered Argentine sympathies, which did nothing but show how football should be to live on. The match was preceded by a conversation about the future of football and fashion with David Bellion, creative director of Atletico Paris, Danny Williams, founder of Beautiful Struggles, and Jack Whelan, director of Le Ballon, who summed up the idea of football that nss sports has been trying to pursue for five years in one day, rejecting all forms of discrimination, extremism and violence, but understanding football for what it is: one of the most disruptive cultural forces in the world.