View From The Sphere

An in-depth look at Arsenal’s new 2011/12 home kit [images and video]

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The Arsenal home shirt for the 2011-12 season features a new bespoke crest that marks the club’s 125th anniversary year – and looks forward to the club’s next chapter as the most environmentally-friendly kit Nike has ever produced.

Founded in Woolwich in 1886 and called The Royal Arsenal, the celebratory crest design combines the graphic of the first club crest with the current version in a bold white print and carries the anniversary dates of 1886 and 2011 on the heart of the shirt.

Underneath the celebratory crest sits the word ‘FORWARD’ as a tribute to the club’s first motto.

While the history and tradition of the club is present in the shirt design, the new home kit is made from Nike’s ground-breaking recycled polyester – which for the first time includes both the shirt and shorts.

Each complete kit is made up of up to thirteen reclaimed plastic water bottles. This new manufacturing process reduces energy consumption by up to 30% compared to manufacturing traditional polyester and saves nearly 100 million plastic water bottles from being dumped at landfill sites.

The classic design is inspired by the 1970’s strips and boasts a clean, refined look with a block red body and white sleeves with red speed stripe detail. The shorts are white with a red speed stripe and the white socks carry the club’s founding year 1886 on the back of the fabric.

On the back of the shirt below the neck reads ‘’Arsenal’, while inside the front, on the back of the crest, is a graphic that reads ‘Victoria Concordia Crescit’, (‘Victory Through Harmony’), Arsenal’s Latin motto, which was previously featured on earlier versions of their club crest between 1949 and 2002.

The light weight kits (13% lighter than previous versions) actively regulate the players’ body temperatures on the pitch to keep them dry and cool at all times through use of Nike Dri-FIT technology. This technology draws sweat away from the player’s body through the material where it can evaporate.

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