Fashion has long been a key element of football culture. The terraces have always provided a promenade upon which the British working-class male could exhibit his sartorial - as well as sporting - allegiances, be they Teddy Boy, Mod or Skinhead. However, the late 1970s saw the evolution of a fashion that football could claim entirely as its own: the Casual.

Befitting for a fashion tied to the strongly partisan game of football, regional and team-based characteristics were apparent. This paper will examine the evolution of the style adopted by what were arguably the very first Casuals, those of Liverpool FC, in the period from 1976-1979. As with all Casuals, their look was hybrid and took inspiration from a heterogeneous range of sources; soul boys, punk, European sports casual labels and pop culture. However, as this paper will argue, the most enduring influence upon their style in this period was that of David Bowie and an outfit that he wore in the 1976 Nicolas Roeg film "The Man Who Fell to Earth" and again upon the cover of his 1977 album, “Low”.
However, due to a marginalisation of the early regional football casuals – both culturally and within the context of the museum – there exists a dearth of primary sources documenting this moment in fashion history.

This paper will consider the impact that these institutional and cultural prejudices have upon the researcher wishing to investigate marginalised cultures; and via representations of this outfit in the work of author Kevin Sampson - an ‘active participant’ in the creation of these new cultures - and a methodological framework that draws upon existing theories of modernity and masculinities, consideration will be given to the way that fashion and dress are mediated and translated into word and image and the value these sources hold for scholars in this field.