Let’s talk about The Pink. It’s time. It’s Pink. So Pink. Big Bold Capital Letter Bubble Gum Barbie Dream House Pink. Barnsley FC Pink. Get one thing straight: Julie Anne Quay is not apologising for The Pink. Nor for the other two 2024/2025 Barnsley kits – a deep red, star-studded home ensemble; a silvery rose-studded away get-up – that have roused calls for whatever the sartorial equivalent is for the guillotine. The Australian fashionista and Barnsley minority owner did not apologise for igniting an online maelstrom last season with the ginormous star-studded red collared home strip (the brainchild of Colm Dillane, the mega-famous creator of Kid Super once hailed as a “fashion-adjacent Johnny Knoxville”). She’s not about to start apologising now. “I started to screenshot the DMs that I’m getting, just to save them,” Quay, the founder of global fashion brand VFiles who splits her time between New York City and Oakwell, says playfully. “The most eye opening one was someone who was like, ‘You have a hormone imbalance.’ It’s from a man. I’m like, wow, since when are you an expert on women’s bodies? First of all, so rude!” Quay is laughing. She knows this space: fiery exchanges over colour and pattern placement. Players are consulted over designs, with Meat Loaf-esque operating methods (liking two out of three is effectively a greenlight). Last season’s black strip was agreed to be too warm. Another colour was required, one that would also assuage Elaine, head of laundry at Barnsley. Last season, Elaine beckoned Quay into the club’s laundry room to assess a mountain of grass-stained white shorts and socks. “No more,” she’d begged. Quay also wanted a colour that appealed to younger audiences, young girls in particular. The kits also needed to keep in mind a third thing: the women’s team. “Someone asked, ‘Julie, the shorts are supposed to be white. Why are they not white?’” Quay says. “And I actually replied to say that the women’s team will not wear white shorts. That’s a specific request.” Women’s teams across the globe have ditched white shorts, assuaging long-standing concerns from players about wearing white during their periods. The England Lionesses swapped from white shorts to blue, a decision that was hailed by forward Beth Mead as a “step in the right direction”. Quay, though, wanted to go a step further. Fashion is inherently in the business of disruption. Quay is a devoted evangelist of the model. And as insignificant as embracing pink as an “energy colour” for young girls or foregoing white shorts altogether rather than simply designing specific shorts for the women’s team might seem, in a summer where women’s football has increasingly become the first in the queue to feel the proverbial axe when sacrifices are required, Quay opted to invert the trend. “It’s about listening. We need to listen,” says Quay, her voice growing serious. “Our girls won their division (the NERWFL Premier Division, the fifth tier of English women’s football). They’re champions. They have a trophy. We’re up to tier four now, we can be professional. The goal is to get to the Championship. But it’s difficult to get that recognition. “When I post about women’s football, I’m accused of only caring about the women’s team. They’ll say, ‘You better not be taking money from the men’s team to put in the women’s team.’ It’s really disheartening, derogatory. It’s embarrassing. If you talk to the girls about it, they just shake their heads, there’s a reluctant acceptance of it. But they shouldn’t have to accept it.” She adds: “You see what’s happening with Manchester United, how Ineos are like, ‘no, uncheck that box’. For women’s football, it’s this constant cycle. Keep playing. Keep showing up. Keep doing it. Do more. More. More. Prove yourself. Then, we’ll see. That model is not really good.” Within Barnsley, Quay describes ample support, with many staff from the men’s side helping with training and coaching support for the women’s team. Even so, Quay still finds herself battling internally for funding (and once, fighting the academy for allegedly stealing the women’s teams’ balls). While Barnsley Women can become a full-time professional outfit now that fourth-tier status has been achieved, the club’s financial reality means professionalism will look different to that at Chelsea or Arsenal. The likelihood is part-time operations with an incentive-driven program (free travel, food, accommodation, gym memberships, access to sport science, nutrition and physiotherapy) to be hashed
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