Sports Banger: Lifestyles of the Poor, Rich & Famous

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 DIY fashion house, record label and socially conscious satirist in the mould 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, couture pieces, community projects, protests and fashion shows feature alongside one off pieces produced for Skepta, 2 Chainz, Samantha Morton, David Hoyle and more. The book contains a full t-shirt archive of iconic Sports Banger bootleg t-shirts. Reappropriated Nike, NHS and Adidas logos rub shoulders with images of defaced government letters, raves, food banks and official collaborations with Tommy Hilfiger and Slazenger. The book is an of-our-times hybrid of political comment, DIY fashion and proud class consciousness. Essays featured come from influential figures from the worlds of fashion, art and music, including Turner Prize-winning artist Jeremy Deller, writer and curator Anastasiia Fedorova, and fashion writer and curator Nathalie Khan as well as voices of the general public and reviews from Vogue, Dazed and the V&A.

About the Author:

Jonny Banger is an artist, raver and the founder of Sports Banger, a London-based clothing brand and rag-tag collective. In 2020, Jonny exhibited over 200 government letters defaced by kids and young people from across the UK at London's Foundling Museum (where he was made a Fellow later that year) and received a Haringey Heroes Award from the Mayor of Haringey for his work. Sports Banger won the Innovation & Excellence Award at DJ Magazine's Best of British Awards 2020. Jonny has had work exhibited at the London College of Fashion, the Museum of Applied Arts (Vienna) and in other independent venues.