Naomi Accardi: a niche that involves football and fashion
«I also feel compelled that the time has come to allow others to have a voice» Naomi Accardi traces a path for sports and fashion storytellers
Naomi Accardi When the niches in fashion shelter communities
Just as in the story of culture, fashion, and sports travel, Naomi Accardi had to shift many realities before returning to Italy where she moved to Milan. Her multidisciplinary nature merges photography, research, and writing as vehicles for solid creative communities. She acts as a director that knows where each piece of the puzzle should fit, collaborating with brands that want to build efficient stories for their consumer communities.
Being able to create a niche that involves football and fashion, she writes about the intertwinement of the two, where subcultures and tribes are more united by the sports culture. Naomi approaches themes such as women’s football movements, democratic design, discrimination, or rejection. What started as a hobby became a platform that unites people with the same mindset and drive for storytelling. Throughout her experience, Naomi lived in the United States, the south of Germany, and Dubay, while consistently traveling the world. With an experience with brands such as Nike and Adidas, she renounced corporate life finding the freedom to initiate and work on her terms.
Naomi Accardi’s career path
Maria Hristina Agut
You have a multidisciplinary background. What did your career path look like until now?
Naomi Accardi
I studied visual communications in the United States, a period when I wanted to work in fashion. I thought I wanted to be a stylist initially. I did various internships in different things, including PR, and magazines. When I graduated I returned to Europe and for a small time period lived in Milan and worked as an assistant organizing events, applying for jobs in marketing and communication. I ended up working as a PR coordinator at Carhartt in Germany.
I always say that my career started at Carhartt because there was my first real job where I supported the head of global communications in the implementation of marketing and communication strategies. I’ve always written as a hobby but I never thought in my life that it would become an integral part of what I do and how I live. My interest in the culture of sport also intersected a bit with what I did professionally speaking in marketing since I worked for a sportswear company. I was working along the way with various international magazines. Above all, I worked with Italian magazines that dealt with the football culture intersecting with all the rest of culture, therefore design, fashion, music, and subcultures.
exploit the economic resonance of a brands to provide a space to experiment
Maria Hristina Agut
What project represents you most?
Naomi Accardi
When I was working with Adidas, I had the opportunity to come up with a completely new concept for a brand (Beyond72) because it was all a concept that the creative agency I was working with at the time helped me develop. I wanted to create a center for the creative community of Dubai where I lived because there wasn’t a meeting place for these young people who wanted to learn more about photography or do workshops while getting to know each other.
My goal with this space that existed for six months was to exploit the economic and mediatic resonance of a brand such as Adidas to give the creative community a space to experiment and learn new things. Every week we had a workshop or an event, a reason for people to meet there. This project is kind of what I would like to do in my life if I had the money to be able to finance it. It represented the pinnacle of both my career and my personality since I always liked bringing together different people and creating connections that would later become friendships or work relationships.
I would have loved growing up, when I was a young creative who was still learning what she wanted to do in life, having a place where I could go and have direct contact with people that I liked, workshops where professionals explained certain things, always knowing that at any time of the day, any day of the week, I could go and find someone with whom perhaps I could discuss. That was kind of my aim with this project. I have managed to do it, especially in Dubai, which is a very alienating place, and for me, that was the highlight of my career and the project to which I feel most connected. I would very much like to be able to bring it back to life one day.
Naomi Accardi – combining football and fashion culture
Maria Hristina Agut
As a creative consultant, what is your role with the brands?
Naomi Accardi
I help brands and editorial platforms to create content that has to do with sport and culture, but not only, but many times they also call me to help brands create their tone of voice.
Maria Hristina Agut
How does it feel to have found a personal niche and how does it influence the voice you hold in the industry?
Naomi Accardi
I’ve tried many things that didn’t happen to be my case. It was also a bit of an internal struggle arriving at being able to create and work with people that I choose and have the same interests as me.
When I started working in football, or in any case in combining football and culture, or fashion, I was one of the very few people who did it. I was the only girl who specialized in this type of storytelling. In the last couple of years, the doors of this narrative angle have opened up significantly. I also feel compelled that the time has come for me to take a step back for a moment and allow other people younger than me, giving others the opportunity to have a voice when they’re talented people in the industry.
editorial projects and collaborations
Maria Hristina Agut
We experience the rise of many editorial projects that have occupied almost every niche. Do you find your approach represented in the industry?
Naomi Accardi
I collaborate with an English magazine called Season Zine, which is the first magazine that has brought together women’s football and fashion. It was founded by Felicia Pennant a Jamaican, Nigerian from London, who one day got tired of never being able to find herself represented in magazines or football projects. She has a background in fashion, but she’s a football fan. In 2018, after several years of external collaborations, she asked me to join the magazine as editor at large and now we have been working together for almost five years. I think that Season Zine represents my point of view and how I see football. It inspired me by being a platform where I can express my way of experimenting with fashion design, and sports culture.
LA formation – Naomi Accardi
Maria Hristina Agut
Was there a city where you live that influenced you more and helped you build your direction?
Naomi Accardi
I would say that Los Angeles formed me because I was there in a very critical period of my life, after the age of 18, when you are finally an adult and detach yourself from your family, even if my parents let me go around the world since I was 14. I was there both in a critical period of my life and a historic moment in Los Angeles when there were so many of the people who made the history of streetwear, of music; they were my friends, and we went out together every day having so much fun. I think that I owe a lot of who I am now to those two years in Los Angeles because they gave me a creative boost. After all, there I began to understand what I liked, I began to learn what street culture meant. I was very lucky and had the privilege to surround myself with people who are now the ones that impacted the world of music and streetwear.
Maria Hristina Agut
Speaking of subcultures, are you noticing any emerging communities that are worth the hype?
Naomi Accardi
Well, I feel so removed from Gen Z, because I live quite a reclusive life in the sense that I don’t go out as much as I used to. I think the thing that has unfortunately been lost now is the creative process of subcultures and how it is difficult to remain underground because of the internet, social media, news, and communication speed. I remember growing up I didn’t have social media, but I was at the dawn of the internet as we know it today, and had to do absurd research, which is 90% of what I do in my job. On TikTok, there are subcultures, and remote spaces that I’m not even a part of, because I don’t even have the app.
Naomi Accardi and the sport culture
Maria Hristina Agut
What about in terms of sports culture?
Naomi Accardi
At a subculture level, I am in contact with people of my generation, in particular, therefore slightly older millennials, and also slightly older people. In my work, I am very interested in talking about the aftermath of youth. Many times the focus is always on the new generations, which is right because they represent the future, but it is as if after thirty years no one is interested in you anymore, especially in sports. Even more in women’s sports, where if you don’t become someone by the age of 25 your career is over and your passion for sport can be thrown out the window. Instead, I work a lot with women over 35 who have found in sports a pastime and a passion that goes beyond professionalism and is a way to meet new people.
The Pink System – Naomi Accardi
Maria Hristina Agut
What are some of the projects you are working on right now?
Naomi Accardi
I’m working on two specific projects that I can’t wait to finish. A week ago I started a directory of football creators, but not limited to people who have to do with football in the world: photographers, writers, marketing specialists, and video makers, to put everyone together in one place and be able to distribute the opportunities. I wanted to give visibility to talents and there are already almost 250 people, some of them contacting me to say they’re making projects thanks to this platform.
The other project I was carrying out with a dear friend of mine from New York, and it’s a platform mostly indicated to girls since many football shirt reselling shops are all targeted at men. Instead, we want to create a platform where girls who are passionate about football, and who like that style, can find very vintage t-shirts. We mainly find shirts from the 70s or 80s still made in knitwear. Most are not from official teams but from smaller ones with catchy logos. The project is called Pink System, and we are launching it these days. For the moment we’re starting as a very simple online shop, but we’d like to make it a platform where we can organize events for girls to meet, all those who want to experiment with soccer fashion. We would like it to become an archive for stylists who can come and get pieces and use them in their shooting but it’s still evolving.
Naomi Accardi
Naomi Accardi is an editorial consultant & writer with 10 years experience in visual communications and brand marketing. Aside from contributing to multiple international publications, her work focuses on helping brands and platforms develop and implement a strong editorial strategy, find the right tone of voice and offer outstanding storytelling and experiences to their audience.
Editorial curated by Spring Studios for Lampoon
Photography Clara Borrelli
Production @Spring Studios
Creative Director Anouk Jans @Spring Studios
Sr Art Director Simone Lorusso @Spring Studios
Producer Carlotta Cannata @Spring Studios
Videomaker Andrea Dal Martello @Spring Studios
Styling Giulia Parenti
Grooming Francesca Rezzola
