Aww...Meet The Lifelong Manchester United Fan Who Designed The New Adidas Kit In A £750M Deal (Photos)

Adidas has reunited with Manchester United to reveal the new home kit for the 2015/16 season. The first jersey made by the German sportswear giants after they signed a £750million world record deal with the club may have some fans harking back to the 80s.

 
That is because the simple design, with a white v-neck and classic three stripes down the sleeve, is not a million miles away from the adidas kits of 30 years ago.

The new home kit, which will be debuted in the opening game of the season at Old Trafford, features a classic v-neck collar and three-stripe design down the shoulder. There is also a graphic design on the hem of the shirt taken from the 1990 shirt famously worn by Ryan Giggs in his debut season.

The design of the new kits has been a personal passion for adidas designer, Inigo Turner who is a lifelong United fan.

Adidas' senior designer Inigo answered questions about Manchester United's new kit...

How many people are involved in the planning, developing and making of the kit?

Not so many. In terms of the content itself, usually from over here, we have myself as designer and my superior and we'll share it among the teams.

We have around eight designers, our marketing colleagues and the product manager. Development are the guys who actually make the jersey come to life in the end. Obviously, we also run it through our communications department as well because they produce the material you see in videos and the printed media.

Why the classic look?

We have a few directions and then discuss it internally and see which one best fits the story we want to tell. We're pretty confident with the whole story about the two partners coming back together that this was a clear direction and one we're really comfortable with.

We felt the first jersey back should be a celebration of this so it needed to be red, the v-neck was very iconic and very much a Manchester United adidas shirt and, obviously, just the three white stripes. This means, on a very basic level, this was a clear winner. It wasn't so difficult in the first season because we've waited a long time and wanted to celebrate the look of us both together.

Tell us some secrets of the new kit...

The blue away strip between 1990 and 1992 was a key thing we wanted to include in the shirt. On the hem of the waist on the home jersey, we have this debossing and it's the 'M' graphic from the kit we all remember from the 6-2 win at Arsenal and the Rumbelows Cup final success as this was the inspiration point for that. We wanted to have cues to the old jerseys and show we'd looked into the past and re-imagined them into a modern shirt or re-interpreted it.

The 1982 jersey inspired the overall look of the shirt with the v-neck and colored engineered collar, which is tipped red and black and then the white cuff. The waistband was more of a subtle nod to that 1990s away shirt but it brings an extra level of detail on the kit which the fans will notice, not at first glance, but understand the reference later on.