Chelsea is goated when it comes to lifestyle collections And it has been proving it for a couple of years now, time and again
How many lifestyle collections are the right number for a football club each season? The most rational answer to this question is that there is no exact number. What is certain is that some clubs have definitely pushed the accelerator, releasing them so frequently that the previous collection often gets lost: often because they all look the same, often because they are completely unnecessary and meaningless, serving only commercial value. The responsibility of the clubs in this regard is, however, relative. Sponsors often dictate a predetermined number of lifestyle collections per season, and the higher the tier of the club, the greater the number of collections produced. The reason is simple: they target a wider audience and, consequently, have higher commercial value. However, these dynamics are common to all clubs within the same contractual tier. This is why, at the end of the season, Bayern Munich, Arsenal, Juventus, Real Madrid, and Manchester United will have more or less the same number of collections, all being tied to the same technical sponsor, in this case adidas.
The story changes when it comes to in-house collections, conceived and developed directly by the clubs. Staying in the Premier League, in the 2025/26 season we saw Arsenal collaborate with a brand like A-COLD-WALL, without any actual involvement from adidas. Arsenal is not mentioned randomly: numerically, it is the club that released the most lifestyle collections this season, taking advantage of several windows between 2025 and the early months of 2026. In this context, a hybrid approach - right in between of an in-house collection and a sponsor-related project - can also be seen in the collaboration with NTS Radio. It is therefore increasingly complex to create collections that have both conceptual meaning and genuine quality and aesthetic care. In this sense, considering in-house collections and the greater freedom that a brand like Nike seems to allow compared to adidas - perhaps also because it has a smaller roster of clubs compared to its competitor - Chelsea is today the club that manages this operation most effectively, making the most of its opportunities.
The "Gianluca Jacket" designed by Jordan Vickors
To commemorate the man and the great player Gianluca Vialli was for Chelsea, in July 2025 - during the peak of the 2025 Club World Cup - Chelsea released a limited edition lifestyle collection for the Reimagined Icons line, highlighted by the Gianluca Jacket. Contrary to what the name might suggest, this is not the jacket Vialli personally wore, but rather a long-sleeved training jacket used by Chelsea with Umbro during the years Vialli played for the Blues. It was designed by the designer and founder of the IDA brand, Jordan Vickors, a Chelsea fan who modernized the piece perfectly. Needless to say, the jacket sold out within seconds.
Return of the Rebel
In the 1994/1995 season, Chelsea, sponsored by Umbro, introduced an away kit with a never-before-used color combination - silver and tangerine -to avoid frequent kit clashes. This combination was reused in the following season (1995/1996), effectively cementing the orange accents that had started appearing on the Blues’ kits in earlier years. Thanks to the work of designer Angelo Trofa, the club, along with Nike, managed to recreate this color blocking in a collection worn exclusively during warm-ups by Liam Rosenior’s players: a balanced choice, with Nike opting not to interfere with the Home, Away, and Third kits, likely to avoid adding more colors and keeping them limited to pre-match wear. Naturally, this is a fully hybrid collection, including both performance pieces, worn by players during warm-ups, and purely lifestyle items, like the reimagined goalkeeper jersey with padded elbows.
Chelsea Pensioners
If previous collections had not yet referenced preppy style, the Chelsea Pensioners collection expands the stylistic references of the Blues’ lifestyle lines. But who are the Chelsea Pensioners? They are residents of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, British Army veterans who have chosen to spend their retirement years in this historic community. For this reason, the Royal Hospital receives a donation equal to a percentage of the collection’s sales.
The fame of the Chelsea Pensioners was such that, over a century ago, when a nickname was sought for the newly formed Chelsea Football Club, it was natural to choose this name. This led to Percy the Pensioner, the figure depicted on Chelsea’s first crest and later on the Chelsea Pensioners collection, used from 1905 to 1952: an emblem that never appeared on kits but quickly appeared as a logo and in illustrated form on official materials.
With this collection, Chelsea revisits its past to create a completely unexpected offering.
