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Brand shout out to Kappa

Emily Gosling

Editorial Consultant


I wanted to give a shoutout to Kappa and its inimitable silhouette logo. Kappa manages to be a sports brand that conjures up little to no notions of sport: instead it (to me at least, and likely most people who were about 13 years-old in the year 2000) instantly denotes the smell of watermelon Bacardi Breezers that were bought thanks to your mate’s older sister’s ID; of illicit Marlboro lights masked with litres of Impulse body spray; of sweaty older boys with curtains who had cars with dodgy under lights and improbably large sound-systems.

Kappa’s branding is unmistakable: it feels cheeky, edgy, somehow always cool, and never packed with any expectation that you have to do any physical exercise. That logo is sexy in a deliciously tacky/not-sexy way, like Ann Summers bubblegum flavoured lube, or that Athena poster of a woman playing tennis and scratching her bum.

Known as the “Omini” logo, Kappa claims it “represents the equality of men and women and their mutual support,” though that feels very much post-rationalised for the modern era. This is Kappa: no one expects it to be woke.

The brand adds that the logo was “created quite by accident during a photoshoot for a bathing suit advertisement for Beatrix in 1969,” mysteriously suggesting that that “The silhouette cast by the backlighting of a man and woman leaning against one another seems to say something.”

The logo, to me, still feels perfect and weirdly chic; and I still feel way cooler than I should in one of my many pairs of Kappa joggers, or t-shirts, now that I’m in my mid-30s.

A brand shout out to Kappa

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