Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the poor, rich & famous

(Hardback)

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The first Sports Banger retrospective, published to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the anarchic, genre-bending cult fashion house. Sports Banger is a genre-defying, boundary-breaking fashion collective run by Jonny Banger, who interrogates British pop culture, fashion, class and politics through the subversion and (mis)appropriation of branding. Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich and Famous tells the story of the first ten years of the irreverent brand, from its foundation in 2013 to the present day. It charts the rise of the brand from an underground bootlegging operation to an all-inclusive, internationally recognized fashion house, record label and socially conscious satirist in the mold of a modern-day Hogarth. In a layout created by the Sports Banger studio, the book's images reflect the anarchic story: photographs of studio ephemera, fashion shows, collaborations with iconic brands including Nike and Tommy Hilfiger, and Sports Banger T-shirts rub shoulders with images of defaced government letters, raves and food banks. The book also features short essays from influential figures from the worlds of fashion, art and music, including Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, MC and producer Skepta, N-Dubz singer Tulisa, Vogue writer Luke Leitch and arts journalist Hettie Judah.

Author Bio

Jonny Banger is an artist, raver and founder of cult fashion brand Sports Banger. Founded in 2013 as a space for Jonny to sell his irreverent bootleg T-shirts, Sports Banger quickly grew into a cultural phenomenon. He has now staged four shows at London Fashion Week and worked on official collections with Nike and Tommy Hilfiger. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the brand started a food bank at a local primary school and mounted an exhibition of defaced letters from Boris Johnson at the Foundling Museum in London.