The Summer Man-Style Odyssey Of Manchester City Striker Erling Haaland

When Dolce and Gabbana chose Puglia, and more specifically Bari, as their summer 2023 show venue, Manchester City’s world-beating soccer team under (Italian) trainer Pep Guardiola had not yet won their ‘incredible treble’ of the British Premier League Cup, the Football Association cup, and the European Champion’s League cup, and their attacking mid-fielder Jack Grealish had not yet kicked off the summer by inventing what the English now call “the Full Grealish,” for his spectacular four-day vodka-and-everything-nonstop-disco bender, beginning with the parade in the team’s home city and ending with him being carried out from some venue on a stretcher with a nourishing IV drip very much part of his fashion accessories.

Nor had City’s star striker and Norway’s own current Thor simulacrum Erling Haaland any sort of a chance to exhibit himself in anything but team kit, with or without his shirt, which, when he’s in full scoring roar, he has a habit of stripping off to put on his head, as pictured during his clunky Freaky-Frankenstein stage dance during Manchester’s “treble” parade celebration with his massively amused middle-aged trainer, Pep Guardiola below.

Often, post-match, he simply drapes him and his girlfriend Isabel Johansen, in regulation Man City kit herself, in the Norwegian flag.

But soon after the team’s triumph, in late June, Haaland and his mates trooped off to Ibiza for a little beach time, after which, by July 9, he was popping up in Bari, Puglia, in the company of the fetching Ms. Johansen, his steady, at the Dolce and Gabbana shows, cool and collected in a baby-blue suit — swimming strongly upstream against the Italians and others around him who seemed to favor darks, as pictured above.

In true off-duty man-style, Haaland generally works a bracing lack of care, and more than a little of his inner geek, as in the coordinated — quilted, no-less, — baby-blue “play-suit” thing, with spot-on “faux-quilted” matching baby-blue rubber sliders, as he hit the beach in Ibiza. What was that get-up? Were the sliders somehow custom-melted with the quilting by Nike? Since he is Europe’s and England’s (and Norway’s) leading phenom baller at the moment and looks to stay in that slot for the foreseeable future, these fashion plays, and specifically this staggeringly infantilizing play-suit in Ibiza, deserve serious man-style dissection.

Question: Is Haaland letting the man-side down or holding the man-side up? Any fashion editor will tell us that men, as a group, badly need help in the dressing department. But on balance, Haaland is not nearly the fashion-crime perpetrator we might, at first glance, think. Some of his choices, which may not be choices so much as they are stabs in an underlit closet, are not that simple.

First, allow us to point out to the uninitiated non-footie crowd that prime among Manchester City’s kit colors is baby-or-sky blue. The man of the hour in Europe clearly loves that and flies that flag unabashedly. But it’s also true that the (again, shockingly textured) baby-blue play-suit move does carry a strong five-year-old-in-a-sandbox feel. It begs the eternal man-fashion question: Where’s his mom and his bucket and his little shovel? Hopefully, she’s nearby with a big bag of well-iced soft drinks and an umbrella she can put him under, because he’s too helpless-looking to be left unattended in the merciless Spanish sun without a hat for too long.

That noted, there are serious real-grown-up precedents for such beachwear. We could argue that Sean Connery could make even the most ridiculous kit look right, day or night, but the late-Thirties-to-mid-Sixties open-necked beach shirt — based on the tried-and-true open-necked guyabera — was a solid, popular choice for decades on the Continent and in the States, from Palm Springs to San Trop. Period.

None of which noble provenance really excuses Haaland’s cartoonish quilted thing, rather, it’s simply to say that the whole flat-front, wide-collar, no-shirtails beach cut shirt-jac direction is a classic one. In Haaland’s case, there is also a strong castaway air of just how temporary clothes — all clothes — are. When you look at Haaland in anything, practically the next thought is, as soon as he gets around the corner, he’s gonna rip whatever it is that’s on his back straight off it. This air of impermanence about whatever they’ve got on is what professional athletes — who spend so much of their time either in official kit on the field or naked or semi-naked in locker rooms and on the sidelines — bring to their civilian wear: It’s gone, man, that suit, gonna be back in my work clothes in a minute.

Less clear is what’s behind Haaland’s love of white frames for his shades. Or more specifically, why the man insists on loving this particular pair of clunky faux-Sol-Moscot-outta-the-Thirties pair as his summer go-tos. It begs the question: Man is getting ready to sit down to re-negotiate a contract with the City bosses and the lucre is rumored to be bumping on up to a heady $600,000-plus per week. So, what happened to tortoise shell Ray-Bans or Persols, dude? Why the white disco-boy shades?

And the answer lies in Norse mythology: He’s Thor! Thor doesn’t have a stylist to worry out the tiny crap like his shades’ frames. Plus, his girlfriend, who does care about fashion — otherwise, why pop up at the Dolce and Gabbana women’s show in Bari — probably gave them to him. At least, they look like she did.

What is strikingly good and is working like gangbusters for the man is the — yes, baby-blue — double-breasted suit, a second, fuller view of which is above. That’s a keeper for this man’s imposing silhouette. Part of the fashion problem posed by Haaland is in fact one of what we might call reverse idealization. In other words, the man cuts such a winning physical figure that it’s not possible to idealize him, for instance, with an avatar. In fact it’s the reverse: If the actual Norse god Thor had an avatar, it would be something like Haaland.

So, for that sort of male silhouette, classic, conservative dress is the only way, which is to say, despite the fact that the baby-blue suit cuts against the surroundings at the D&G show, it’s actually quite a conservative garment and works well in harnessing the striker’s massive figure. Note to Ms. Johansen: Nothing ‘contains’ your ersatz Thor-man quite like the frame of a clean double-breasted. You’ll want to be urging him to collect a closet full.

Finally, in our style odyssey of this global footie god, there is the problem of the hipster man-purse. The rule in Europe for men or women is, anybody can do anything they like on a plane — and especially on a private one, which is highly likely after polishing off the treble around Europe in June, the mode of conveyance that Haaland and his boy-ohs took to Ibiza. This provides the paparazzi with loads of fun, especially in summer, as the coats come off.

Above, in a paparazzi shot of the disembarkation moment, we can clearly see the be-chained, purple cross-body monstrosity on the shoulder of our subject. How did that thing get there? Off camera in the entourage, was there perhaps a a label-obsessed Russian model, recently dumped off an impounded superyacht by the Guardia Civil because of some sanctions, for whom Haaland might have been carrying it? We certainly hope so, because if this bag actually belongs to the record-breaking goal-scorer, and he truly went out and bought it with the intent to use for himself, then his agents should reach out to Ms. Johansen immediately to get it as far away from him as quickly as possible.

To keep up appearances and to maintain his heroic status as a latter-day Thor, we will have to write him a one-off fashion excuse. Something like: He was late for the plane and realized he left his working man-bag at home. At duty-free, they only had knock-off Versace cross-bodies that the Kardashians would like, so he gritted his teeth, picked one up and threw his passport and cell in it.

Part of the game. Such are the vagaries of man-style, especially when the men in question are off-duty.