by Louis "Guichex" Lemeillet
Is it weird to talk about fashion if we're talking as subjects of a group of teens who are playing hours of video games? Maybe, although I believe even geeks, nerds or whatever you call them, have their own fashion in some way, despite being far away from the “fashion” world you see in everyday mass media. But is it weird to talk about fashion if we're looking at a sport? Clearly it isn't. Every sports has its own fashion. Basketball, American Football, Soccer, Baseball, Golf, etc. they all have a clear set of clothes which is common only to them. So why not eSports? This discipline is still new and unites a bunch of people who weren't used to being in the spotlight before. Still, every successful team is selling its own merchandise and wants to popularize it. What is different from other sports is that eSports doesn't require a special outfit, and a lot of teams seems to have a different idea of what they have to wear mainly depending on their region.
Asia wants to be classy.
Asian teams (Korean, Chinese, South-East Asian) have somewhat united to wear almost the same outfits when they're performing on stage, or at least for the upper body. A lot of teams we saw at worlds are wearing low-key polo shirts with a little room allowed for the team logo and the sponsors. Regardless, they are still visible especially when Riot is making a lot of interviews and close-ups on players. A small difference is visible for EDG & AHQ where they're wearing classic t-shirts but are almost always wearing sports jackets which follow the same rule as before: subdued logos from sponsors.
In some way, the fashion these teams are putting on is really close to what you'd find in golf. And it's quite logical: golf is a sport, but not as intense as some other sports like Soccer or Basketball. Some might categorize it as “not really a sport,” but the same could be said for eSports. Also, Golf is a sport which requires a lot of focus, mental strength and precision. Same for eSports! The only difference here is on the lower body of our favorite players. Koreans are often wearing absolutely horrible sweatpants. I mean, I wouldn't dare to wear those kind of pants outside of my house nowadays, and I don't think it sends a good image around the world, since it'll keep pro-gamers classified as “geeks in sweatpants.” They also keep wearing them in advertisements like Faker did recently. I mean...come on.
Chinese and South-East Asian players are wearing a bit more classy jeans and you have to give them props for it. I know sweatpants are comfortable for playing in, but man, jeans aren’t that hard either. It's not because you wear jeans that you'll perform worse considering the level of those players.
Europe, too much soccer?
Despite being a fan of Europe's performance in eSports, I still don't understand how some structures think regarding their team clothes. I mean, yes, we like soccer a lot, but it doesn't mean you have to copy it and import it into eSports. Why did sports jerseys, of all clothes, make the cut here? My guess is a lot of people investing in eSports come from an average social class, not especially poor or rich, but with a middle-class culture which is obviously greatly centered around the most popular sport in Europe. No other sports come close to it, and it has a clear and vast influence on a lot of people.
Coming from this social class, eSports players and fans wanted to say their passion for video games was as great as some peoples passion with soccer (or as great as their own), and directly imitated its style, importing the sports jersey you can see on a lot of European teams now: Fnatic, Copenhagen Wolves, etc.
I honestly don't think this is the best piece of clothing for eSports. It isn't, properly speaking, a physical sport. It requires a lot of focus, and while you sweat a lot during an official match for sure, I don't think it requires such an outfit. The core “physical” and psychological needs of pro-gaming is mental strength and precision, which are mostly shared within sports like golf, or maybe baseball.
North America went in the right direction but stopped halfway.
North American LoL teams have embraced eSports fashion in a different way than other countries by not trying to make it look like a traditional sport, but almost all the teams have a different style of clothes. White hoodies and sky blue T-shirts create Cloud 9's theme. Dignitas has black hoodies and CLG wears long sleeve cotton shirts. TSM players wear satin varsity jackets and Evil Geniuses scored a fashion knock out in their amazing black leather jackets. Only Curse seems to enjoy the sports jerseys (and they should fit them more, because it looks like they're way too big for some players!)
But unfortunately, the NA teams are almost too convoluted. All of them want to differentiate from the one another too much, and none of them, except Curse, are reasoning as a business by renewing their official clothes regularly. At some point, a new season into LCS should mean a new set of clothes. Fans are generally happy to see those changes and feel like they need to buy the new ones to be a better representative of the team. Yet, a lot of teams are hesitant on this point and just play around with colors to offer more than one set.
In the end, I think eSports clothing styles may actually be too diverse. Hoodies, sports jerseys, polos, t-shirts (and even an attempt at polo-shirts and hoodies from SK) can be a little weird. All these pro-gamers play the same game but none of them are wearing the same thing. It comes across as a bit disorganized. But that just means that eSports has nothing written in stone yet. I like it, because then we can only go up.
Setting up some standardized fashion code might help set values and integrity inside the community. Moreover, it helps show the world that eSports are real, that they are happening here and now and that mainstream industries needs to invest now to get the bigger piece of the cake. I think polo shirts are the best option, but it doesn't really fit with the gamer image we have in our Occidental regions. Nevertheless, it has been shown in recent studies that a lot of eSport viewers are not hardcore gamers, and looking closely into this population might deliver the answer.
by Louis "Guichex" Lemeillet
