Sant’Elena Calcio 1993/94 Home Shirt

The Italian nineties in a state of grace: jacquard with the Biemme monogram woven into the cloth, panels framed in black piping, a buttoned collar and a number 4 with a three dimensional shadow on the back, typography no modern computer would dare propose. This is a match worn shirt from the 1993/94 Sardinian Eccellenza, the season the reborn Sant'Elena finished 13th, played at Is Arenas, which in Sardinian means the sands, with the most literal sponsor in the collection: Stella Marina, a civil and industrial cleaning company that set a yellow starfish swimming across the chest. A starfish upon the sands, all of it two steps from the beaches of Quartu. Biemme, the Vicenza house that in those years dressed Cagliari in Serie A, thus gave Quartu's neighbour the same richly detailed provincial tailoring. Of all the match worn shirts in the archive, this is the most nineties of them: a Sardinian centre half, a drop shadow number, and a starfish for a coat of arms.