Today, Angel City released its 2023 away kit, the Represent jersey.
Featuring a map of the Los Angeles area, pops of sol rosa, and a back-of-neck VOLEMOS hit designed by Viva La Bonita's Rachel Gomez, the team will wear this light-toned kit mostly on the road, allowing them to take a literal image of the city with them when they represent ACFC on hostile turf. Each jersey can also be customized with one of 12 unique patches designed by a member of the LA community and representing a few of the many faces of our city.
But there’s a lot more to this jersey than first meets the eye—read on to learn about the deep background behind the design.
While the most obvious aspect of the Represent jersey’s design is a map of the Southland, the details reflect a deeper message: LA is more than a place.
The first detail to call out is the design treatment of the map. Rather than solid color, it’s printed in halftone, a technique where the image is reproduced using dots of varying shapes and sizes. That’s a symbolic choice in addition to an aesthetic one: to the designers, each fleck of color represents an individual story in the mosaic that is the city of LA.
“You reproduce the whole using the sum of the parts,” explains Tassinari.
From one perspective, that approach speaks to LA’s unparalleled diversity: it’s a city that’s impossible to neatly sum up, because it has so many different faces.
It’s also a way of communicating that LA isn’t a physical space—it’s the people who live here. “By breaking the map up into pieces,” Tassinari continues, “we’re saying, this physical space is secondary to the people.”
One of the challenges of designing a map jersey for LA is that it’s hard to define its boundaries. The city of LA has definite borders, but when people say “LA”—especially in the context of “I’m from LA”—that’s not exactly what they mean.
“As we were making the jersey, there was kind of this moment of, ‘oh, this is why no one [in LA] does it,’” says Tassinari (this is the first map jersey by an LA team). “Where it begins and ends is not as obvious as other cities—and it’s changing every day, because people are coming to LA and deciding to make it their own.”
The design team addressed that challenge by making it a feature of the jersey: instead of having a distinct edge, the map graphic wraps from front to back and gradually fades out.
Tassinari also points out that the version of the map on the Represent jersey is just one snapshot of what the city looks like. “There's an element of this jersey that I think is kind of a time capsule of where LA is today—we’re acknowledging that LA will change and evolve with time.”
The Represent jersey features a color that wasn’t present in either of ACFC’s kits last year, a light gray called Armour. All three of the club’s primary colors—the other two are Sol Rosa and Asphalt—represent different values.
Armour speaks to dedication and determination: Angel City has visionary goals that can only be achieved through hard work and the courage to break barriers. The English spelling, which is intentional, honors the game’s roots.
Because the players will wear shorts in the same color, the full kit has a seamless look, where the “ocean” section of the map seems to continue into the shorts.
Like last season’s Daylight jersey, the Represent jersey features the word volemos on the back of the neck. On the new kit, however, it’s more prominent size-wise, and the design by Gomez—like her designs for her brand, Viva La Bonita—takes visual cues from Chicano art.
“Volemos is such a beautiful word,” says Gomez. “It represents ‘let’s go.’ It represents movement. And to me, it represents a dream.”
Viva La Bonita uses the saying “your dreams are your wings.” When Gomez got the opportunity to collaborate with ACFC, the synergy between that motto and Angel City’s was irresistible. “I've always told myself, your dreams aren't just these imaginary things that come and go,” she continues. “It's about where you can take yourself, where you can take your life. And it's so natural to be like, ‘Let's fly! ¡Volemos!”
You can purchase the Represent jersey here.