Footballers' Wives' Style

[pucci_mama]

Thanks for an interesting read, Kit

hmm... money cant buy style, I guess.

And why does fotballers just want an emty-headed chav that they just can send out shopping??

 

[helena]

because they tend to be empty headed chavs who just play football.

 

[PrinceOfCats]

because they tend to be empty headed chavs who just play football.

I wonder if this is true for continental players who come from countries with different football cultures to ours. For example, Thierry Henry ad-libbed a lot of the 'va va voom' advert according to people who made it and I think the really nice modern, architect-designed house in the background is his own. You can't imagine him being 'engaged' to some burberry & peroxide tart...

 

[helena]

no PoC he always comes across as quite intelligent (maybe he is the exception that proves the rule)

 

[lucky]

Most footballer's wifes seem to have abandoned the trashy Juicy/luminous colours/Mukluks look. During the summer they were all doing the Boho thing. Wonder what they will all be wearing this Winter. Don't know if I can see many of them being able to pull off the Victoriana. pencil skirt look.

 

[princessgem]

She shops, she scores!

[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Its most popular sellers include yellow tracksuits and rabbitfur pompom boots, and the future Mrs Wayne Rooney has already spent £20,000 there this season. What is it about the Liverpool boutique Cricket? Jess Cartner-Morley joins the real-life footballers' wives and discovers why, for women who like their men in shorts, there is only one place to shop[/FONT]

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Monday May 16, 2005
The Guardian

[/FONT][FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The whole point of a little black dress is supposed to be that you can wear it to any occasion and fit in. So, after a protracted wardrobe crisis, I have chosen, for a midweek footballers' wives' night out, a simple, beaded, knee-length black crepe cocktail dress. My plan is that I will blend into the crowd, all the better to observe. Big mistake. Huge mistake, in fact. Walking into Cricket, the Liverpool boutique where owner Justine Mills is drinking pink champagne with Harry Kewell's wife Sheree Murphy, Lesley Owen (sister of Michael, and fiancee of Richie Partridge, a Liverpool player), and Malene Holst, girlfriend of Liverpool defender Djimi Traore, I blend in like a black cat in a butterfly house. Colourfully dressed and impeccably groomed (Owen has had acrylic nails since she was 14, she tells me) these girls flutter about the store in green and white and pink, like a little flock of Tinkerbells.

And while their clothes and handbags are expensive (they are all in designer jeans, Murphy has a Ghost top, Owen a Balenciaga "baby Lariat" bag) these pale into insignificance next to the jewellery. Everyone is wearing an impressive diamond necklace. Holst has an enormous Jacob & Co watch studded with dozens of diamonds, while Lesley's watch, although slightly smaller, is impossible to miss because the face is so encrusted with bling that she has to hold it above her head at a certain angle to be able to read the time through the diamonds. I am not convinced that my gold-and-coral chandelier earrings - a tenner from M&S, which I was quite pleased with until now - quite cut it, to be honest.



I am here because the first ladies of football - headed, since Victoria Beckham moved to Madrid, by Wayne Rooney's fiancee Coleen McLoughlin - have become a national obsession. McLoughlin's appearance in this month's Vogue has become a media story in its own right. And anyone who has followed tabloid tales of her pom-pommed, rabbit-fur mukluk boots, or the canary yellow tracksuit worn by Alex Curran (soon to be Mrs Steven Gerrard) will have noticed that one name crops up again and again - Cricket.

Cricket, a two-floor designer boutique in Liverpool, has become an unofficial footballers' wives' headquarters, not just for Liverpool and Everton players' wives, but for the Manchester teams too. McLoughlin is reported to have spent £20,000 there this season. Owen comes "about once a week. It's a meeting point - we come here and then go for lunch at the Living Room". The store has become such a mecca that paparazzi are stationed almost permanently outside and each day at 4pm, gaggles of schoolgirls come in to browse and, if they're lucky, star-spot. They all beg to be given one of the distinctive, animal print Cricket carrier bags, which have become a status symbol in their own right. One recently sold on Ebay for £25.

Justine Mills, the owner of Cricket - which started life 14 years ago as a menswear store, hence the now rather incongruous name - has seen her business boom since expanding into womenswear six years ago. She has the true buyer's talent for knowing her customers so well that she knows what they want long before they realise they want it - Cricket was the second store in the country to stock mukluks, long before they were popular. Mills sees the association with football as inevitable: "This city has always been famous for football, so if you're the premier boutique here, you're bound to be linked with the game." The previous evening she was in the store after hours helping Liverpool chairman David Moores and his wife choose outfits for the Champions League final in Istanbul next week.

Along with the players' lounges, Cricket forms the hub of these women's social life. Last week, Mills arranged a girls' night out to a Kylie Minogue concert, which Murphy describes as "like a hen night. We went in a stretch Humvee and we were all wearing bunny ears and dancing all the way there." Tonight, the gang are meeting at Cricket before heading to a party at Boodles, their favourite diamond store. These girls love to sparkle: as well as the necklaces and the watches, diamante shoes are a favourite. Lesley is wearing spike-heeled sandals with diamante bands around the toe and ankle which, she admits, are absolutely killing her. The shoe section of the store is wall-to-wall bling: there are diamante Gina court shoes, diamante Christian Louboutin sandals, diamante Pucci mules.

Behind the sparkle, however, the footballer's wife look has shifted in the year since Beckham gave up her Queen Bee crown to move to Spain. The latest style - epitomised by McLoughlin and Alex Curran, and Cricket's other top customers - is younger, more colourful, sunnier and more up beat. Pucci, Missoni and Matthew Williamson have taken over from Gucci and Dolce. Mills describes the look as "very LA, very Paris Hilton".

The new footballers' wives look is not a sophisticated one. As Alexandra Shulman, the editor of Vogue, notes, McLoughlin "wears a more expensive version of what most 19-year-old girls would like to wear. She wears the Chloe smock top, instead of the Topshop version." And while it is a style much mocked in the press, it is one that many girls aspire to. Owen is, tonight, sleek and sophisticated in a black bandeau top and designer jeans, but she first came to the shop because she loved Curran's Juicy Couture tracksuit and asked her where she bought it. (Owen now has so many Juicy tracksuits that she had to ring her mum from the store recently, to ask her to check in her wardrobe whether she already had a purple one.) When Curran was photographed in the yellow tracksuit - with almost universally unflattering headlines - the shop was deluged with requests for identical orders, from all over the country.

But there is a more sophisticated side to Cricket. The same Chloe Paddington bag that has been a sell-out in London's hippest boutiques is a must-have here. Alongside the rails of sunshine-coloured Juicy Couture are avant-garde naval-inspired trousers by Balenciaga (£605) and an edgy, deconstructed, mesh-and-satin mushroom-coloured Stella McCartney dress for £3,000. When I ask them who their style icons are, only Lesley says Beckham; Sheree cites Kate Moss, while Malene prefers Helena Christensen.

Although they are invariably known as footballers' wives, they are, in fact, more often, footballers' fiancees. At the Boodles party, every other girl I meet is engaged. At first I keep asking them, politely, when they are getting married, but am met, more often than not, with a blank stare. The message seems to be, once you've got a gorgeous Tiffany sugar-cube on your finger, why bother with a boring old gold band and a piece of paper?

But this aside, these women are curiously old-fashioned. Isabella Blow, who styled a fashion shoot in Liverpool to mark the Biennale, says the city reminds her of 18th-century London - "the girls dress like peacocks, or exotic birds" - and the lifestyle of a footballer's wife seems, in some ways, akin to that of the wives and daughters of wealthy families of a bygone era. They are privileged, but have limited autonomy, moving from city to city at the whim of the transfer market. (Sheree, who is charming and funny and bright, was working as an actress on Emmerdale until last year, but has given up for now because, as she puts it, "something's got to give".) They are all well-mannered and unassuming - when we go for dinner after the party, they each quite happily pay for themselves - and, it seems, very well-behaved. Even with free champagne flowing, none of them get remotely tipsy. Clothes are a safe way for them to be flamboyant and have fun.

Owen is the daughter, sister and, now, fiancee of footballers - even though, she says, Michael warned her off footballer boyfriends because he didn't like the way many of them treated women. She is an interior designer, but seems happy to play a traditional housewife role at home - when I ask her whether she watches the TV show Footballers' Wives, she says that most evenings she watches whatever Richie wants to watch while she does the ironing. Keeping perfect house is something of a point of pride: she washes both her and Richie's cars herself, she says, although at a petite 5ft 2in she has to stand on a chair to do the roof.

But some footballers' wives are quite different. At Boodles, I meet Steve McManaman's wife Victoria. She looks the part, with Barbie good looks, candyfloss hair fastened with girlish clips and stripy pink Missoni dress, but she is a barrister, and is keen to point out that many footballers' wives do have careers; it's just that the paparazzi prefer to wait outside Cricket for pictures of girls laden down with carrier bags than snap her in a suit on her way to work. Holst is a journalism student who hopes to go into broadcasting, while Nagore, a Penelope Cruz lookalike who goes out with Xabi Alonso, makes it clear she'd rather talk to me about the hotel where she works, than about the stores in which she shops.

But the sneering at McLoughlin is not borne out of the tabloid media's passion for women pursuing fulfilling careers. It is more about class. Shulman, who put McLoughlin in her magazine "because I thought it was an interesting story, and the fact that it was unexpected was, of course, part of the appeal for me", was shocked by the fuss that ensued. She attributes much of it to "snobbery and jealousy. There's an idea that it's all right for posh girls to go out and spend a lot of money on Balenciaga bags, but somehow it's not all right for a working-class girl to do it." What's more, the Cricket aesthetic is firmly northern. As Shulman says of McLoughlin, "she has a flamboyant, northern taste. To be proud of the fact that you've got money is more of a northern than southern trait." Recent research by the Queen's bank, Coutts, found that there are currently 3,200 millionaires in Merseyside, and the bank has opened a Liverpool branch. With the cost of living substantially less than in London, these wealthy Merseysiders have disposable income to burn. Like it or not, it seems the Cricket look is here to stay.[/FONT]

Paris Hilton in NW UK !!!?

You've GOT to be kidding .

As I have written in the Collen thread, it is too easy to jump on the bandwagon and slag her off!
These women may not have good dress-sense, but they aren't stupid like many are implying.
Coleen does not live off Wayne's money anymore!! That is silly. She has her own promotions business; her mother has her own business; she has her own dvd out at xmas; she makes tens of thousands from gracing the cover of Hello; makes money from the likes of her feature in Vogue; has her own documentary on Channel 5 soon; designers are probably queing up to give her freebies; she makes money from any interviews she may want to do; has a jewellery collection and a car collection worth hundreds of thousands of pounds each. Truth is, she doesn't need Wayne anymore! And many of these 'bimbo' women are in the same position. They open their own businesses to fall back on.
I wouldn't dress in this La style, but it is pretty harmless if they want to. I think some of them probably are downtrodden women, and others are very smart women making the most out of the situation they are in.
Good Luck to them.
I don't work, and although I presonally don't do the whole rich-women-clique thing, (I'd rather be out with the dogs, or at the gym, or with friends) I think a LOT of the criticism is to do with jealousy. When people say 'get a job', that's ridiculous. They are making more money for their futures doing nothing in some cases.
I much prefer Drome in Liverpool, full of 'cool' younger clothes, more casual, (Paul Frank, Forarina, Miss Sixty, 2B Free, Bbay Phat, Wheels and Doll Baby, Diesel, Rocawear, Maharishi,Addidas, etc etc).
There's my rant over with.

 

[princessgem]

The same Chloe Paddington bag that has been a sell-out in London's hippest boutiques is a must-have here.

People like that shouldn't be allowed to own bags like that.

Why don't your threads ever stick, Kit??

Wtf?!
Am I missing something?
'People like that'???
Poeple like that are what the fashion industry love, people that will spend thousnads and thousands of pounds in one shopping trip.Even if they look awful and are slated, the outfit/bag will sell out

 

[princessgem]

I wonder if this is true for continental players who come from countries with different football cultures to ours. For example, Thierry Henry ad-libbed a lot of the 'va va voom' advert according to people who made it and I think the really nice modern, architect-designed house in the background is his own. You can't imagine him being 'engaged' to some burberry & peroxide tart...

In the US there is the same kind of thing going on... think of the playmate lovelies hanging off some rock star/actor/basketball player in a 'cool' LA club.
It's the same the world over.

 

[Kalista]

Actually, princessgem, if you think about it Colleen still IS living off Wayne's money. Perhaps not directly, but she still is. WHY do you think she got all those deals? Because she's Wayne Rooney's girlfriend for heaven's sake! Not because she is a businesswoman.
And there's really no need to be so confrontational. To each their own, remember that.

 

[princessgem]

Actually, princessgem, if you think about it Colleen still IS living off Wayne's money. Perhaps not directly, but she still is. WHY do you think she got all those deals? Because she's Wayne Rooney's girlfriend for heaven's sake! Not because she is a businesswoman.
And there's really no need to be so confrontational. To each their own, remember that.

Ha.
I am not being confrontational!
I just hate people slating people they don't know.
For sure, she is 'famous' because of him, but my point is she could just go shopping all day, (as she is perceived in the media) but she has taken that money and made it into something of her own.

 

[princessgem]

Ah ha, I think you were referring to my 'wtf' comment?
WEll I stand by that!
'People like that'?? How awfully snobby and judgemantal, (if meant in the way I am interpretting it).
Nobody deserves deisgner gear or doesn't deserve it. It's a vice.

 

[lucky]

^ I agree with you about Coleen. She may have just been Waybe Rooney's girlfriend but now she is a celebrity in her own right. The "people like that" comment perplexed me too.

 

[Handbag lover]

^ I agree with you about Coleen. She may have just been Waybe Rooney's girlfriend but now she is a celebrity in her own right. The "people like that" comment perplexed me too.

Where is she a celebrity? In the UK?? It must be the only place

 

[xxkissbangxx]

Where is she a celebrity? In the UK?? It must be the only place

True, true. I've stated this before, that I don't quite like Colleen. I disagree with people who say that she's a "celeb in her own right" or worse, a "role/fashion model" or something. The only reason why she's famous at all is cause she's Wayne Rooney's girlfriend. Period. She's not especially gorgeous or sexy or trendy, for that matter. Obviously, she's not rich on her own nor does she come from a rich family like Paris Hilton does (which, obviously, jumpstarted her career). She's evidently not a "worker" or one of the "talented ones" (singer, actress, etc.) either. She's just Wayne Rooney's girlfriend who's trying to fit into this odd role of being some sort of superstar. I personally don't like it, the idea of fitting into this role or whatever...it's just so superficial and not to mention fake and trying hard.

Another thing about her is she refuses to just get straight to the point and/or be honest. In a recent article she talked about her "beautiful teeth" and that people always give her compliments and are always asking if their real. She claims that her only secret is that she brushes them a lot. Photo evidence posted on LJ claim otherwise. She also claims that all the money she spends is her own, from those "shoots" she does and her articles and her company. But no way is she spending all her money with the amount and frequency that she shops. No way. By the way, there's an article on LJ regarding her so-called company. It's worth around 1 pound a week or something to that effect. Bottomline is that it certainly isn't enough to even get you a couple of tops from Topshop. If I were in her position, as "obnoxious" as some people might label me, I'd rather be honest. I think Colleen (and a few other footie wives) wouldn't be too bad if they were.

P.S. If I were going out with a football star, I can't wait to be the first "real" football wife who'll actually try to find my own work that pays well and that I'm really interested in, watch my boyfriend's games and support his team [no big for me cause I'm a huge footie/Man Utd fan anyway], buy from "haute couture shops" AND thrift/vintage stores, not be afraid to wear the same/similar outfits twice and actually have my own, actual opinion and say on things. Bless.

 

[littleliverbird]

xxkissbangxx- Despit the fact that you are a utd fan (I'm a liverpool fan), you have got it spot on about Coleen.
Bloody hell, if the girl thinks the best compliment you can get is 'you have beautiful teeth' then theres just no hope.

I agree that people would be less critical of her if she told the truth, but the reality is that she doesn't. She is a jumped -up money grabber who obviously thinks it's no big deal if her boyfriend sleeps with lots of other women. Like she keeps telling us, he 'worships' her. Well, if thats a mans idea of 'worship' then I'm going celibate. Why hasn't one of the magazines/papers who have interviewed her in recent weeks asked her about his cheating?, Are we supposed to be all nice and bow down to her because shes young or whatever? She has put herself in the limelight deliberately so she should expect the consequences. I hate the idea that she thinks she's a star who can buy whatever she wants whilst conveniently forgetting that it is never her own money she uses. Not to mention having the audacity to try and tell us what we should wear! WTF? Fashion advice from Coleen? I'd rather go without.

If she says she's sick of people judging her then maybe she should do everyone a favour and sod off, at least then we wouldnt have to see/read about her being a 'down to earth, normal girl' in every paper or magazine. At the end of the day she's a wannabe who will do anything she can to be famous. The girl was very deluded when she said she wanted to try being a model. Have you noticed that every interview is the same drivel about being 'normal' and 'loving topshop'

Her and Alex Curran make a right pair. Both are constantly trying to outdo the other whilst both being jealous of each other. They are both exactly what I would call typical bimbo footaballers wives in that all they do is spend their partners money and dont do anything for themselves. Very shallow and very fake.

I would hate to look back on my life and think that all I did was shop, spend, shop, spend. I want to do my own thing in my own right. I mean, how can these footballers have any respect for these women? Can you imagine the conversations? What did you do today darling?, 'I spent all day shopping and bought more clothes' How time must fly! Dont get me wrong, I am sure there are footballers wives who do have their own life and identity, these 2 chavs are not in that category and never will be.

I remember reading an interview with Alex that made me laugh out loud. In it she was describing her 'normal day' in which she claimed she was up at 7:00am every day to do steven and the babys breakfast (she cant get a job because shes a mum dont you know), She then gets the baby ready and spends the morning ironing and shopping for FOOD. Then she comes home, cooks tea, cleans again and does not even sit down till about 10:00 at night. In fact, she said that she only 'found the time' to go shopping once a week at most, and even then it was to buy the baby or steven clothes and NOT herself. I dont know where to begin correcting that utter rubbish, but interestingly enough, in a football magazine, steven gerrard said in an interview that HE gets up with the baby as Alex 'likes a lie in', and also that she DOES shop all the time 'because she likes fashion', he also said that they have 2 cleaners and HE has to do the food shopping because she wont. Also, he mentioned that her mum minds the baby a lot and that Alex NEVER buys his clothes because he prefers to go himself. Now thats two completely different accounts of what she does. Who do you think is telling the truth?

 

[xxkissbangxx]

It's official. Alex C. and Colleen M. are just pathetic. However, reading the above, I'm starting to dislike Alex more cause not only is she a liar (well, Colleen is too) but she thinks she's all that and wants people to acknowledge her just the same! She apparently spends all her time in Cricket and is spotted always checking herself out in the mirror. No offense but I personally find her ugly and rat-looking. I'd rather she spend "her" cold hard cash on a face transplant, maybe that'd serve a high purpose...for ALL of us. Not to mention she goes around and doing/saying things to get noticed. What a sad loser. Not to mention one without style and class.

 

[littleliverbird]

I can't vouch for the fact that Alex spends ALL her time in cricket looking in the mirror, but that time I mentioned previous where it was 20 minutes or so totally repulsed me. Honestly, she was just standing admiring herself and didn't care that people (including the staff) were wondering just what she was doing. How much can one girl love herself?!

I really wish you could have seen her like I have, then you could actually witness it for yourself!

My sister (who was with me in cricket at the time) is not at all affected by people like her, but even she was saying that she is a minger. Why doesn't one of her friends or her family tell her how ridiculous she looks with all that make up on? She makes Jodie marsh look bare-faced!

 

[xxkissbangxx]

I can't vouch for the fact that Alex spends ALL her time in cricket looking in the mirror, but that time I mentioned previous where it was 20 minutes or so totally repulsed me. Honestly, she was just standing admiring herself and didn't care that people (including the staff) were wondering just what she was doing. How much can one girl love herself?!

I really wish you could have seen her like I have, then you could actually witness it for yourself!

My sister (who was with me in cricket at the time) is not at all affected by people like her, but even she was saying that she is a minger. Why doesn't one of her friends or her family tell her how ridiculous she looks with all that make up on? She makes Jodie marsh look bare-faced!

That's exactly what I'm saying. These girls or rather Alex thinks she's all that when frankly, I can name a thousand other girls who are way better than her without even trying. She and Colleen are certainly not the prettiest, the richest, the hottest, the most stylish...so why on earth do they keep thinking they are? If I saw her staring at herself in Cricket or something, I would have to resist the urge to stand beside her and say "It's such a shame you're one to waste such a lovely day staring at something so ugly" or "You know, if you get paid to stare at rats everyday like you are now, you'd be a millionaire...that way, you wouldn't have to suck up to your football boyfriend all the time like some pathetic leech" or something just to bring her back down to earth. LOL!

 

[littleliverbird]

Well, I literally had to drag my sis out the shop because she was going 'who the F does she think she is?' and to make it worse, Alex had a 'lackey' friend with her who was telling anyone who would listen how her and alex had been away for 2 weeks to spain 'for a break' and that they 'didn't take the kids with them' . I didn't go into cricket for a long while after that because I always hate the thought of seeing her there. Sadly though, I seem to see her around a bit

LOVED your reply on it, by the way!

Have you seen the closer mag advert with coleen? Argh! It will make you want to be sick . Coleen is walking down the road with her shopping (of course), and a man picks something off the floor and goes 'excuse me, have you dropped something?' and she replies in that god awful voice of hers- 'yeah, I have. A dress size!' Eeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[xxkissbangxx]

Well, I literally had to drag my sis out the shop because she was going 'who the F does she think she is?' and to make it worse, Alex had a 'lackey' friend with her who was telling anyone who would listen how her and alex had been away for 2 weeks to spain 'for a break' and that they 'didn't take the kids with them' . I didn't go into cricket for a long while after that because I always hate the thought of seeing her there. Sadly though, I seem to see her around a bit

LOVED your reply on it, by the way!

Have you seen the closer mag advert with coleen? Argh! It will make you want to be sick . Coleen is walking down the road with her shopping (of course), and a man picks something off the floor and goes 'excuse me, have you dropped something?' and she replies in that god awful voice of hers- 'yeah, I have. A dress size!' Eeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!

You said it: eew. A dress size?! Well, good for her cause so did we (the audience)...apparently, we all dropped 10 pounds when we puked everything in our system out upon seeing that ad. Geez. She's seriously trying to hard to be some sort of fashion diva and it's just not working. Some girls can work it (i.e. MK and A, Nicole Richie, Chloe Sevigny, Sienna Miller, Kate Moss) and some girls can't (i.e. Alex Curran, Colleen McLoughlin). She's obviously trying to squeeze herself into this particular image, same goes for Alex. It's sad. I wish there would be at least one decent football GF who actually cares about other things other than shopping, has her own source of income, has a natural yet really chic sense of style without pushing it or trying to hard, isn't so vain or conceited (*cough* Alex *cough*), doesn't just freeload of her BF, doesn't keep trying to steal the limelight...you know, like a REAL PERSON? P.S. I might actually just say that if I saw her (Alex C.) doing that in public. Some people just NEED to be brought back down to earth...fast.