Kappa®, 40 years of jerseys for soccer’s greatest champions

Cultural study featuring the original kit worn by soccer legends to open inside Montaigne Market store in Paris. Also recounting the tale of a cultural revolution, inside and outside stadiums.

Paris, 7 May 2018. In 1978 ® opened the sports sponsorship market in : for the first time in the history of soccer a brand’s logo was sewn the shirts worn by Juventus. Today, 40 years later, BasicNet – the Italian group owner of the brand – is celebrating that historic event with an exhibition: “Kappa®, the champions’ jersey”.

The uniforms with the Omini logo that made soccer history will be on show until May 26th in the Montaigne Market store in Paris: 14 original Kappa® items, matched by just as many pictures preserved to date by photographic archive 98-studio. They were worn by the champions who made soccer history: Ronaldo, Buffon, Del Piero, Zidane (in the picture) and many others.

But the show doesn’t just feature Michael Platini’s Juventus or “Marco” Van Basten’s Milan . Also featured in the show is the Italian national team’s uniform, worn on the pitch for the first time in 1999, a new shirt that would change soccer kits forever: the Kombat™, created by Kappa®’s R&D Centre with an extremely innovative and elastic technical fabric. The first that thanks to the “stop stopping” system would highlight foul play for the referee, at the same time allowing players to complete the action.

“Thanks to soccer shirts, which are a prime example, at the end of the Seventies Kappa® first established a huge market for casual and ”, says Lorenzo Boglione, the Group’s Sales Vice President.

“In 1968 based company MCT, now BasicNet, had already changed the way an entire generation dressed” says Cecilia Botta, curator of BasicGallery, the BasicNet Group’s historical archive, home to one of the world’s greatest collections of soccer jerseys. “In just three years, between 1968 and 1971, it created brands Robe di Kappa® and Jesus® Jeans, both stars of the 60s cultural revolution in Italy”.

Ten years later in 1978, the same generation that had clamored for freedom wearing jeans and T- shirts started using sportswear in their leisure time. And MCT, with its Robe di Kappa® brand – simplified later in Kappa® Sport and finally into Kappa® – signed the historic deal with Juventus.

Kappa® and Montaigne Market have created a capsule collection especially for the exhibition, exclusively on sale in the Paris store from May 7th -26th.

INFO

“Kappa®, the champions’ jersey” 7- 26 May 2018 Montaigne Market 18 Avenue Matignon, 8éme – Parigi opening hours: 10:30-19:00 (Monday to Saturday)

CONTACT

Montaigne Market - Caroline Charles, [email protected] Kappa – Fabien Lerou [email protected] – 01 40 27 95 79 Montaigne Market 18 Avenue Matignon, 8éme – Parigi opening hours: 10:30-19:00 (Monday to Saturday)

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Kappa® is a brand of BasicNet SpA, the Company also owner of Robe di Kappa®, Jesus® Jeans, K-Way®, Superga®, Sabelt®, Briko® and Sebago®. BasicNet’s leader brands are present in the sports and leisure apparel, footwear and accessories market. It operates worldwide through an international network of entrepreneurs, licensees of the brands, which produce or distribute the products. BasicNet offers to its network services of research, development, industrialization of the products and global marketing. All the company processes occur only through the Web, making BasicNet a “fully web integrated company”. BasicNet, with headquarters in Turin, Italy, is listed at the Italian Stock Exchange since 1999.