Season Zine

0:04[Applause]

0:13obviously I'm Felicia I just wanted to tell you a little bit about me obviously I'm the founder and editor-in-chief of season I'm 26 I'm from London born and Bretta I went to st. Martin's and I graduated for the fashion history in theory degree and I also am MT TJ qualified writer and I've lots of fashion and magazine experience also I'm currently deputy features editor at Asus.

0:41So yeah I launch season in 2016 so we're kind of celebrating our second birthday right now. And so I'm going to tell you a little bit about what season is what we do and kind of our processes and approached football culture via key features in issue 5 which is out now and actually I'm setting at the end so please come and have a look.

1:00So what is season it is an independent football and fashion platform that kind of spans biannual print issues and it comes with stickers we also do events I mean the digital content as well the kind of aim of the game with us is to tell stories that showcase and celebrate and empower female fans first whether they play or not and we also try to unpack important issues and precise diversity and collaborate really exciting creative talent we also explore the evolving interplay between Russian football kind of picking up where that but top left office the fashion football by Paolo Hewitt and Mark Baxter and I discovered it when I was writing my funnier thesis at st. Martin's and yeah on this side it's kind of some examples of that it's kind of footballers that are kind of now modeling designing and kind of becoming kind of social media influencers so obviously there's Beckham Tali Ali did be hakam collaboration that you might have seen and actually Cristiano Ronaldo launched his own kind of like air maxes but it's kind of sold out immediately there's also another connection as kind of fashion brands that are kind of drifting on and referencing football culture I noticed that almost every Fashion Week there's at least one show that has a football reference whether it's men's wear all women's wear so on the slide in the center is cachet it's a French brand and so their spring/summer 18 collection they collaborated PSG and she made some really amazing Couture like dresses and then there's also obviously Christopher of a barn and unbraided capsule collection and that shorts actually from our issue five and it was shot by flora McLean there are also kind of official kind of club kits that clubs make a national sides make but also concept ones that designers make so there's the question one with Adidas and in sv5 and the actually shot girls female fans from kind of underdog World Cup team so that's Sweden at the top Adam it was styled in a really great way by Daisy Dean and shot by Lauren what could be so why we exist so you might remember this.

3:26This is kind of the moment that I got into football with Euro 2004 Rostova now they basically just lost the final to squeeze 1 and Portugal were the hosts I remember just watching him cry and I was thinking why is he cry and it's not that important and then. I just like kind of was really intrigued by it he was crying for quite a long time. And I just thought wow I kind of like this.

3:47But I didn't realize it was so emotional and kind of so exhilarating so I just got really hooked on it. And this was I was yeah it was like a summer is really borden and then yeah. I just got hooked and I was lucky Chelsea a ton of my local team and my dad support Stassi and then Jerry Marina came and like the rest of history one a lot and like there was a look I've been to a lot of parades are kind of celebrating our trophies oh let's go back so another thing that kind of spurred this was you know a couple years ago if you googled female football fans this is the kind of imagery that came up.

4:23And I just thought objectively these women were like kind of object fired and sexualized and you know they didn't have a voice you know. There was no kind of and there was very few women of color either which I thought was you know they didn't reflect me one of the female fans I knew obviously it's a prerogative to go go to the game dressed however they want but I just thought that why only show one type of fan so yeah just about like a case of out of sight out of mind and you know female fans and players aren't really very that visible and football culture kind of beyond really lazy generalizing stereotype so it'd be like you have to be a tomboy or you're a lesbian or you're a gold digger or you were wag want to be and there's always. There was always like patronizing pink Club merchandise like you know I know what my club's colors are and it didn't need to be pink and actually you know it's still happening today.

5:14I didn't know if you guys read it was in the BBC getty published an album entitled World Cup 2018 the sexiest female fans was actually quite a lot of imagery like this in 2018 but actually. There was a whole Twitter for about it people were not happy about the fact that women were still being objectified in this way in this time and actually I think they've taken it down now.

5:36So that was like a kind of a good thing that happened today yeah. So kind of over the course of my fashion Prix I sat in town when I was 16 I just met loads of women that are more into fashion football I spent a lot of time doing this trying to figure out how to spell designers names and running around London. And we just see no who talked about football and torts photographer about football when it was just like a really great to have those conversations and I just realized there was nothing really celebrating or targeting or expressing our opinions in a creative way we also kind of wanted to cancer the male pale and sometimes very stale state of modern football culture you know the coverage is wonderful I watch a match for the day every week it's recorded I have about five years worth recorded because I do go back and watch it and like it's just you know very male orientated and again not that diverse so I just wanted to change that overall and fill a gap and just document and really celebrate female fandom creatively and combine my two main interests which are fashion and football.

6:38So yeah this is our mission and talking about the scene kind of format wise the idea was to kind of make it be a cross between a football fanzine and a fashion magazine because there's a really rich history of football fans eans and I just wanted to elevate that and the idea of collecting stickers so size-wise its kind of matched a program size and we were always going for like a colorful confident but still intelligent an aesthetic and yeah it was always going to be in print I think that it's so valuable I love magazines I just think in our digital age it's just way more collectible and extra special and so considered to make something that can be flipped through basically forever so or USB despite the fact that we champion women and we focus on fashion it's kind of the diversity of the like really amazing and fascinating women we feature so across race across age across class across that reality again the exciting creatives we collaborate with and just the original content we create I mean we encourage all of our contributors to be really honest I'm really candid about what they're talking about.

7:50So we can kind of try and dispel some of the stereotypes I mentioned before and really raise awareness about issues that need to change and I mean so far some of the amazing women we've kind of spoken to respect a bit playing who's a really big Charlton fan we speak to model and player oh she Lewis that's DJ sed there. And we could have worked of amazing photographers including Patricia Corrales and Benjamin Swanson.

8:15And this is all sticker slide and we fought her charlet chance and Jacki Sheridan and more so on issue 5 yes which is available now on a website and also I'm gonna sell some at the end if you want to buy one cool and so with the world cup. And I kind of think of the World Cup was kind of a pilgrimage a football program it every four years if you know about the Maps museum that expression this year is have any bodies and fashion the fashion fashion and the Catholic imagination and also there's kind of been an increased visibility off the hedge app and football culture there's been like some really amazing football chants this year particularly around masala because he's had a great season. And it just seemed really timely to explore religion and faith through the female focused football in fashion stories that we tell so how do you put it together yeah lots of team work I have a really amazing team so I have Shaun Roy who is also he added sensation media manager manda Wilkes he's the back here amazing our creative producer and she does a lot with our events and really amazing graphics and I'm designer Nathan Matthews so yeah we were welcome Cesar and kind of around our day jobs and other projects and we've also actually bought a really amazing international network of creatures that we work with and we kind of found them online we find people on Instagram word-of-mouth and actually a lot of people approached us to kind of collaborate on things.

9:49So yeah the season but was kind of thinking what's happening now what's new in football culture what's new in fashion and football culture what a female fans experiencing now who's worth talking to and above all how can we kind of put a uniquely season's villainess how can we kind of step up from what we've done before so a key issue five feature that I'm really really proud of is our cover feature I wanted to left-to-right feature friends as Jeanette Watchi and any leuco to appear on our very fast sucker and Toulon cover to really convey the militant theme because they both believe in God's quite strongly but also the idea of sisterhood and the importance of supporting each other in that is an Olympic sprinter he went yeah tain't broadcast and she also is a children's book author and she's a friend of mine actually because we did our NC TJ to play mr.

10:45Garber so kind of like a big sister vibe and any I'm sure you guys might know her and she's basically one of the most famous footballers in the country and she should sign for your Ventus from Chelsea and he might have seen on ITV because she's probably covering the world cup for that as one of their pundits so yeah in the issue they're in conversation kind of about the relationship you might have also heard about the fact that any kind of went to Parliament against FA because the former England 9ss manager made some racist comments that kind of came public and I'm yeah that was part of her support system and I'm it just bringing them together having them an intimate conversation just really showed a different side of them publicly Jane stop though what this I so happy to have her on board and she was always our first choice for this and the team went Annie's house actually. And sought this kind of in and around the area over east that week and say yeah I'm sure you all aware that the women's game was really growing and I just think that in order to grow the game I think female players need to be portrayed like this they need more press coverage they need to kind of be portrayed in different contexts and really get to know them.

12:00So we can be more and mostly invested in them because there isn't really the same kind of cult of personality where the female players as they are with men's players I always wanted season to kind of try and facilitate that I mean any was on my very first season lead board that in may be years ago. I just thought she was so honest and so inspiring and empowering in this interview and she even said herself that she thought that being a football and being so high-profile yeah she can hold players back talking about what needs to be addressed because they might be worried about offending fans or offending their sponsors so some of that other highlights from the issue we did a really fun interview with singer-songwriter and phenom ladies player Chelsea Grimes and she talks a lot she waxes lyrical about having faith in herself and massive Liverpool fans so she was very sharp in the Champions League orientate in that interview we did a slack style conversation with Catholic Jewish and Sikh fans kind of talking about their club's religious identity and how relevant it is and how it kind of affects how they engage with the football I found out about naziha Ari B's film freedom fields which is she kind of follow three kind of accidental female activists and their football teams and post-revolution Libya and it was such an amazing story. And I thought that was worth kind of spotlighting and the films out later this two year. So it's worth having like it kind of behind the scenes look and then we also spoke to three chaplains four chaplains so he went in to kind of understand what their role was so I think most Cubs have one and it was just kind of well how did they kind of look off to play as well being where do they fit into the kind of club structure we also debited the new feature which is he for she and it's just kind of spotlighting and highlighting men who are she's supporting women in football because they do exist I felt was important to kind of highlight that that you know it sounds like you can be quite an team and actually.

14:00There are men that are kind of championing the cause as well and that is omar alder ii and he is a fitness coach through u8e women's national team and in every issue we have stickers we cut off all contributors to kind of let us know who their favorite player is who their favorite manager is and we'll make them interest occur that can be like stuck throughout the issue or part of most people sticking on their laptops so yeah this time around we kind of did most our Vincent Kompany Chris Oliver allowed that in a deem and we did arsene wenger because our last kind of feature our last page is basically saying goodbye Tim because he finally left so yeah as well as collaborating with creatives we also collaborate with brands on projects that kind of reflect seasons mission and ethos so we worked with Pima ruinous and kind of it was our first ever kind of creative Commission to feature three top women's footballers and they all playfully on. And it was a head of the women's European Championships which happened on the 24th of May I mean basically had created freedom to do if we want to create a pre-match and reactive post match content that was a hundred percent odd Tony we could do whatever we wanted but there. And it was for their social media channels and and it was really just an opportunity to really raise awareness about these players their achievements how well they're doing and also I mean obviously a little bit of Puma product in a really exciting and innovative way so our idea was three players three European finals three rules so it was either high gerberg Eugene ela Samia and just San Ophir marathon sorry she's German like really bad with pronouncing names basically they had the chance to win their third kind of European final winner very first Leon and no other team has ever done that before. So it was just an amazing achievement and we wanted to celebrate that by following them and following them and asking them what their rules were for success on and off the pitch and yeah it was just a chance for us to really kind of refresh the football performance sheet format and we wanted to make it feel really strong really stylish really fashionable but still score folks they have mad skills so to welcome this week has a really amazing creative team we worked for Zhanna Webster and Phoebe Hannah me who directed Tom Wharton to film it Alan yeah the team spent a day in Leon just shooting creating those shots making these kind of gifts and I'm happy to say that Leon won baby moves birth for one to win the title and it was just for us it was really amazing to have this kind of access with players to be able to portray them as more than just players they're like really strong amazing powerful women and they're real people we've got a chance to kind of show a bit of that with what we were doing we've got to humanize them a little bit and kind of give them an empowering voice and introduce them to a new audience which is basically season's mission and actually this product we kind of it became another tour and a new issue so yeah thank you so much. That's it thank you so much for listening and yeah issue 5 of available tonight [Applause]