P90s 4 00s
Back in the early 2000s, football and skating were all bravado, shell suits and shiny kits straight out of a catalogue. Fast-forward to now, and Palace x Nike have flipped the script. Leah Williamson, Lenna Gunning-Williams and Savannah Stacey Keenan front a remix that redefines who gets to wear the nostalgia.
By Glorious
Photography by Alasdair McLellan
It’s a tale of two logos: the Swoosh that conquered the world and the Tri-Ferg, the irreverent logo born in a South London flat that’s now shorthand for British streetwear. Nike and Palace have circled each other for years, but their collision is finally here, and it’s not a gentle handshake – it’s the P90 collection, a chaotic remix of Nike’s early-2000s Total90 line, filtered through Palace’s eye for nostalgia, naughtiness, irony and hype.
Oh, and by the time you’re reading this, it’s probably sold out.
Total90 was the era of peak football swagger. Curved soles, synthetic uppers, shiny kits that looked like they belonged on a Formula One grid. Wayne Rooney wore them like armour. Figo made them look sculptural. Palace has taken that legacy and run it through a blender. The new line is looser, louder and built to move. Shell suits, jerseys and tracksuits are stamped with P90 graphics. The Tri-Ferg folds into the Swoosh. Volt yellow slices through every piece like a highlighter pen. Whether skating, playing, sitting in the pub or down Tesco, it’s a collection designed to be worn, not worshipped. But let’s be honest. Will we actually see it in the wild? Maybe, but spotting someone wearing it will feel like catching a lion on an urban safari.
Palace has made a business out of limited drops, borrowed from its New York skate streetwear forefather, Supreme. Supreme set the blueprint with weekly releases, low stock and high demand, turning scarcity into status and keeping the resale market frothing. Palace took that formula and gave it a British accent. The drops are tight, the hype is real, and the chase is part of the appeal.
No doubt there will be a mix of eager teenagers and bots on the site well before opening time. There’ll be queues snaking round corners, not just for the fit but for the flip. Some will buy to wear. Some will buy to resell. And some will buy to store it ‘with tags, in original packaging, from a smoke and pet free home’, priced at triple, waiting to be slid into a perspex box and shelved like a museum piece. That’s the collector economy. Nostalgia with a price tag. Culture, but only if it’s deadstock.
The campaign was shot by Alasdair McLellan at Manor Place, a new space built by Palace and Nike. It’s part skatepark, part football cage, part exhibition, and open to the public. That matters. This isn’t a showroom. It’s a place people actually use. And it’s not just where the collection was filmed – it’s where the whole thing makes sense. Football and skate culture aren’t being mashed together for effect. They already overlap. This just gives them a postcode: SE17.
Wayne Rooney’s in the mix, along with England captain Leah Williamson, Chelsea’s Reece James, next-gen talents Lenna Gunning-Williams and Jamie Bynoe-Gittens, and Palace skaters Lucien Clarke, Savannah Stacey Keenan, Kyle Wilson, Ville Wester and Pedro Attenborough. Even the legendary Guy Mariano makes an appearance, as does grime veteran Giggs, who plays a very convincing landlord just trying to get some peace in the campaign film. “I was there when the T90 boot first came to life, even during its design stages. It was my favourite as a player, so being part of its evolution into the P90 was something I was genuinely proud to be a part of,” says Rooney.
But the real shift happens with the women fronting this campaign. Leah Williamson, the Lioness and Arsenal player has spent a decade redefining what leadership looks like in the women’s game, on and off the pitch. Calm under pressure, quick to read the moment, and never playing to the cameras for clout. Putting her in a campaign that could have easily been a nostalgic blokefest is a statement. Then there’s Lenna Gunning-Williams. Just twenty, already a problem for any left-back, absolutely fearless and more than a viral highlight. Her Young Player of the Season nod at Spurs wasn’t just hype – it was overdue. The fact that Palace puts Arsenal and Spurs side by side feels less like a PR gimmick and more like a wink to North London’s best rivalry. Four miles apart, over a century of mutual irritation.
nostalgic
Aside from a fun North London alliance – two generations, two clubs, both breaking the template – it also says something bigger. When the original Total90 launched, women’s football barely existed in the mainstream. Skateboarding wasn’t much better. Both were niche, male-coded, occasionally mocked. Now, the women in this campaign define cool. Leah is the blueprint for composure. Lenna represents the next chapter, fearless and forward-thinking. Savannah Stacey Keenan, one of Palace’s standout riders, ties it all together. She’s part of the new British skate scene that doesn’t need permission to belong anywhere. Seeing the three of them together makes sense and is proof that confidence isn’t a pose, it’s a language, and right now women are fluent.
Palace has always known how to read the room. Founded in 2009 by Lev Tanju and Gareth Skewis, it started as a skate crew designing T-shirts in a flat nicknamed “the Palace”. It’s since grown into a global brand with stores in London, New York, Tokyo and Seoul. Every collaboration has hit the sweet spot between humour and heritage, from adidas and Ralph Lauren to Arc’teryx, Mercedes, Stella Artois and even Elton John.
Palace doesn’t chase trends. It sets them, with a mix of irony and instinct that makes its timing look effortless. Its collections have always leaned male, sure, but the women have been there from the start. Walk down Kingsland Road on a Saturday and you’ll see the Tri-Ferg adorning oversized jackets, skate tees tucked into jeans, girls who never queued but somehow got the drop anyway. Palace finally leaned into that truth with Gucci in 2022, adding bralettes and baby tees, and went further with Vivienne Westwood in 2024, launching its first official womenswear collection of corsets and tartan Gore-Tex.
That same intuition drives the Nike collaboration. It doesn’t feel like a pitch. It feels like timing. Football meets skate. Nostalgia meets irreverence. Palace brings attitude and authenticity. Nike brings history, resources and reach. Together they’re not chasing relevance. They’re sharing it. “Nike has always been a brand we’ve admired, and it felt like the right time to collaborate as there are so many synergies between our skate team and Nike,” says Palace co-founder Gareth Skewis.
Nike’s story is bigger, cleaner and more deliberate. It built its empire on innovation and the art of myth-making. The Total90 defined that early-2000s moment when performance met attitude – when boots looked like tech and players looked like icons. But even empires need to evolve. There’s only so many white trainers and “innovative” capsules you can launch before fatigue sets in, and right now the numbers paint a tricky picture.
Nike’s stock has stumbled this year, reflecting a landscape where heritage alone won’t cut it. The competition for attention is now cultural, not technical. Which is why Palace makes sense. Together, Nike and Palace aren’t just trading logos or nostalgia. They’re sharing relevance.
And they’re sharing something else too. Audiences. Profits. Influence. This isn’t just about selling shell suits. It’s about expanding who wears them, who sees themselves in them, and who gets to be part of the story. That’s why Leah Williamson, Lenna Gunning-Williams, Savannah Stacey Keenan and the rest of the line-up matter. They’re not just athletes or skaters or musicians. They’re cultural connectors. They speak to a generation that doesn’t separate sport from style, or identity from performance. Women’s sport isn’t niche anymore. It’s a growth market. And brands know it.
Collaborations like this used to be rare. Brands guarded their turf or flirted with luxury houses for prestige. Now the boundaries are gone. Adidas has Grace Wales Bonner, whose recent move to Hermès menswear proves that sport and luxury are finally speaking the same language. Nike has done it before too, teaming up with Sacai, Jacquemus, Off-White and Martine Rose. Puma has Coperni and AMI. New Balance has Miu Miu. These are no longer just fashion moments. They’re cultural negotiations. It’s about who gets to tell the story, who gets the audience, and who gets to look like they belong to the moment. For Nike, Palace is an ally in authenticity. For Palace, Nike brings scale without selling out.
identity
The timing couldn’t be better. Fashion is on a nostalgia binge, raiding the early 2000s for silhouettes, colours and memories that feel like a collective comfort blanket. The world is a bit erm… grim(?!!) at the moment, so people are reaching for things that make sense. Vintage football shirts. Low-rise everything. The old skate videos that made you feel like freedom was just a pair of trainers away. We remember it as simple, even though it wasn’t. That’s nostalgia for you. It edits out the bad bits and keeps the feeling. Skating still carries that same energy. It’s raw and unfiltered. It’s never glossy, and it doesn’t care what’s trending.
The P90 collection taps that perfectly. It’s self-aware without being smug, nostalgic without being naïve. It knows the story it’s telling, and who it’s talking to. It celebrates the Total90 era without freezing it in time, opens the pitch to women who were once left out, and turns sport into something social, shared and alive. It’s cool, but never trying to be. Which, as Palace fans know, is the point.
The P90 drop is out today in Palace stores and online, with footwear available through SNKRS across EMEA. It’s equal parts archive and experiment, heritage and humour. Proof that collaboration doesn’t have to be corporate. It can be cultural, and even better, it can be fun.
So if a flash of Volt yellow catches your eye, just accept it – someone’s Wi-Fi was quicker….
Thoughts? Feelings? Love? Hate? As usual, let us know on social: @GloriousSport
Editorial Design Root
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