Meet the New York fashionista bidding to make Barnsley FC a global brand
Julie Anne Quay doesn’t recoil at being dubbed a footballing fashionista. If we’re loyal to pedantry, it works. And for all intents and purposes, it rocks.
“When people think about a fashionista, they think about ‘Oh My God, My Nail Broke’,” Quay ribs via Zoom, her Australian lilt playful. “When they think of women in football, they think of strong focussed athletes. I think you can be both. Sporty Spice, Sporty Barbie. Those are honourable terms!”
The Australian-born businesswoman is the founder of VFILES, the New York City-based global pop culture and fashion institution with an ethos centred on the idea of up-and-coming. Its alumni list includes co-creative director of Nina Ricci, Rushemy Botter, and Off-White CEO Virgil Abloh (you'll know him as the guy who made those ultra-cool AC Milan varsity jacket released during their Champions League campaign).
Its list of admirers is almost more impressive: Lil Yachty, Migos, and Cardi B haven't only shopped at the Soho-based boutique but participated in its open mic nights. Justin Bieber debuted his Purpose tour merch as a two-day event at a VFiles popup in NYC, before the merchandise eventually landed on the selling floor of Barney's.
Quay is also, as of 2022, a director of Barnsley, the League One football club who lost out to Sheffield Wednesday in last season’s League One promotion play-off final and whose most famous player in the last decade is probably Conor Hourihane.
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The dichotomy is not as aggressively head-wagging as Barbenheimer. Even so, the notion of a footballing fashionista certainly takes on a double life. A quasi-superhero. Parisian runways and psychedelic fashion democracy by morning, Bovril and Puma tracksuits by 3pm.
The JAQ-Barnsley paradox has perplexed and bemused many with its initial discord. Because (and this is no slight on Barnsley) the former Yorkshire mining town is not known for its sartorial status.
Quay good-naturedly accepts this. She’s courted queries from either side of the pond about the supposed weirdness for nearly two years now, and the former V Magazine executive editor isn’t ashamed to profess she’s not a football tactics expert. “Am I an obsessed fan with an opinion though? Yes.”
Yet, perhaps the perception of Barnsley, and by extension football’s, lack of appropriate haute couture savvy is becoming out-dated. Never before have fashion and football enjoyed such a blissful marriage: Jack Grealish and Gucci, Martine Rose and Leah Williamson, Armani and Napoli, Stella McCartney and Arsenal Women, Marcus Rashford and Burberry.
Grace Wales Bonner recently designed the Jamaican team’s strip. Martine Rose has a kitten heel which is (no joke) a Nike football boot mule hybrid. Ian Wright was an opening model for Labrum.
The result is a broadened reach for both parties, a lucrative requisite in today’s competitive market. Indeed, the crossover potential from runway to terrace is unfathomably ripe.
Rihanna wearing VFiles at Paris Fashion Week 2014 (left) and the Adidas Originals x Kanye West YEEZY SEASON fashion show 2015 (right) (Getty Images)Still. In a Yorkshire boardroom. In the third division of English football. Really?
“You know what? It’s really interesting because it’s really similar,” Quay says.
For those uninitiated with VFILES, Quay serves up two illustrations. There’s the poetic “tomorrow’s talent today”, followed by the more prosaic “definitely colourful. Edgy.”
“We push the needle,” she clarifies.
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Such a description will square with Barnsley fans who will recall the release of this season’s VFiles-curated home kit: a deep red, literally star-studded collared ensemble harking back to the Tykes’ 1989/90 season (the club finished 19th in the second tier and had three managerial changes but, notably, did the double over Yorkshire rivals–albeit eventual champions–Leeds).
Put kindly, the design–made by mega-famous creator KidSuper (real name Colm Dillane), the Luis Vuitton collaborator whom GQ once described as a “fashion-adjacent Johnny Knoxville”–sundered social media.
Self-appointed kit connoisseurs convulsed. Tykes faithful raged, an emotional amalgamation from the shirt’s sheer audacity and its not-so-subtle Americana undertones (that Barnsley’s sponsors are US Mobile whose logo features a bald eagle was an unfortunate oversight).
Football’s braver hipsters declared they actually liked it, X’s equivalent to removing the pin from a grenade and running.
Those in the fashion world wondered: But how could people not like this??
Barnsley's red strip for the 2023/24 season was dubbed the 'worst kit of all time' by some fans. (Photo by Mark Kerton/REX/Shutterstock)Quay doesn’t hesitate in providing an answer. “When we started VFiles and we put clothes on the runway, certain looks were mocked.”
She recalls being featured on a popular late night show, only for the designs to be whimsically withered in front of millions.
“Two seasons later, the designer of those clothes was designing for Vuitton and Givenchy. So, it’s like, say whatever you want!”
Quay is more cheerful than smug. Fans have, whether from frequency or force, grown to the shirt. This is fashion’s ethos: push envelopes, brace for the push back provoked, wait for the eventual embracing.
Football, though, hasn’t traditionally been the poster child for such enterprising gumption. Traditions run deep. Threatening to change them verges on blasphemy and regularly incites manufactured outrage, now an artform.
Yet, football is also a vacuum of constant change.
“One-hundred percent,” Quay says. “When we sign players or make any decision that might not seem obvious or to the fans–why haven’t we signed him, why haven’t we sold him–it’s very similar.”
Julie Anne Quay joined Barnsley's board following the club's most recent relegation from the Championship (Soap Box London)The similarities, as opposed to the differences, are what Quay elects to focus on.
“With VFiles, what do we do? We discover, identity and develop young talent. And we celebrate it. What does Barnsley do on the pitch? Same thing. And potentially sell that talent."
The reliance on data is also another similarity twined between the two seemingly contrasting sectors of her business life.
“So much relies on our data team: stats, development of game strategy, recruitment. It’s very similar to the fashion side,” she says. “When you’re looking at young talent, it’s not just how good they are. You look at their social media presence, audience, engagement, presentation. It’s incredibly similar. Talent is talent. And developing talent is developing talent.”
Quay’s passion for Barnsley is nearly contagious, a fever that has seen her travel the world–most recently to Saudi Arabia to speak at club management sessions during FIFA’s Club World Cup–spreading the gospel of Barnsley in a bid to globalise a club trying to distinguish itself in a Yorkshire hotbed.
Such adventure wasn’t always on the cards. A Manchester United fan throughout the 90s (a confession Quay makes after a five-second silent deliberation before caveating with obvious embarrassment “you can hate me for this”), Quay suffered a subdural haematoma after being involved in a hit-and-run accident in 2006.
“I couldn’t remember things,” she says. “I couldn’t watch TV because I couldn’t remember who the characters were.”
But she could watch football.
“I had freeze memory,” she explains. “I was remembering everything as it was happening, experiencing it then, so I started to analyse games. As part of my recovery, I just watched football. The whole time. Hours and hours of it.”
Barnsley lost to Sheffield Wednesday in the 2022/23 League One promotion play-off finalThat Quay’s son and daughter also played the sport further stoked her passion, particularly as her daughter climbed the youth ranks of the Australian national team.
Trips to and from Australia and all across America for games eventually led Quay and her husband to join Barnsley's ownership group in 2017 when the opportunity arose.
After five years of relative background existence watching games via streams from abroad, Quay decided that, as the club suffered it’s third relegation from the second tier in nine years and a board restructure saw Paul Conway, Chien Lee, Dickson Lee and Grace Hung leave with immediate effect, Barnsley was ready for her.
The expertise brought by Quay was myriad, not just fashion, marketing and brand development. Quay is the curator of a scratch company that now directly competes with the richer, globally-established brands by utilising ingenuity, youth and savvy. It's an applicable approach in virtually any sphere but particularly football's hyper-polarised economy.
There’s also the element of Quay, once again, being a high-profile woman in an arena predominantly dominated by men. The FA recently released its third year report for the Football Leadership Diversity Code for the 2022/23 season. Of the 53 signatory clubs, 21% of senior leaders and 29% of team operations were female, while 7% of senior leaders and 9% of team operations were Black, Asian or Mixed Heritage.
It’s the sort of arena Quay, a Chinese-Australian woman, knows well.
“If you look at most creative directors of fashion companies, they’re men, mostly white men,” she says.
“It’s something that’s quite controversial and not reflective of the way fashion should be. I think in football you’re starting to see a lot of women in women’s football, and not a lot of men stepping across into women’s football to take leadership roles because.. what? It’s that embarrassing?
“Right now, it’s like we have women’s football, let’s have all the women working there. But, no. We need to have women in football. The world will be a better place for it.”
Quay speaks at a Barnsley FC fan forum at Oakwell in December 2023 (Photo by Mark Cosgrove/News Images)Quay is strong-headed and forthright, the kind of woman football has historically avoided. She sees little value in keeping opinions to herself, though she’s learned the value of timing and when her audience might be most receptive to her ideas.
“My other directors will tell me ‘we’re feeling so much pressure from you!’” Quay laughs, though it’s clear there’s little exaggeration.
Quay’s first opportunity to apply pressure arrived swiftly as she queried the absence of a club-recognised women’s team. Within a year of arriving on board, the club had reached out to Fulham, Brighton and Manchester United about structural plans, met with the FA and worked with the already-existing local Barnsley Ladies side (not to be confused with Barnsley Women) to change that reality.
Putting in sustainable foundations for the women’s team was paramount. Quay describes considerations such as pitch allegation, playing on turf, womens-focussed physio teams and other support systems as ongoing conversations, as well as incorporating women's players into the working environment around the club.
Since winning promotion to tier 5, Barnsley are in good position for another promotion push this season, a major ambition as entry to tier 4 permits professionalisation.
Barnsley Women during the FA Cup Women’s match against Ossett United Women (Alfie Cosgrove/News Images)The board’s restructure has brought other positives. Barnsley reached the League One play-off final last season, albeit losing out to Sheffield Wednesday in the end courtesy of Josh Windass' last-gasp winner. This season, Quay confesses play-offs look once more like the likely route back into the second-tier.
Fans, as is their constitution, will moan about certain decisions made by the board and its directors, but Quay is quick to underscore in an era of faceless directors’ boxes and shadowy boardrooms, the club stands uniquely.
“We’re not only gender diverse but racially diverse, making us very open-minded. I think that’s what makes our board such an anomaly in football,” Quay says.
“We’re also not private equity. We don’t put people in a position, check back in six months and say send me the spreadsheet from the board meeting. We watch every game together. We have our allocated seats where we sit because of our superstitions.
“We’re close-knit, and we get upset when the fans are upset. Because 99 percent of the time, the fans are right. And we can’t say certain things. When they’re asking why is this happening? Or that not happening? Or calling us freaking idiots–we can’t say some of the things we might want to because of legal reasons, because of an NDA.
“But the more we can be on the journey together with the fans, the stronger that we’ll be with the club.”
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