Why Aston Villa Wear Claret and Blue: Kit History Explained

Aston Villa adopted claret and blue in the mid 1880s, and no surviving club document explains exactly why. The colours first appear on Villa teams around 1886 and 1887, replacing a run of earlier strips that had changed almost season by season, and once they settled the club never moved away from them. Villa were the first English club to wear the combination, which is why every other claret and blue side in the country traces the look back to Birmingham.

What makes the identity distinctive is not just the two colours but the way they are arranged. A claret body with light blue sleeves, usually raglan cut, is the template supporters recognise, and Villa have returned to it far more often than they have strayed from it in nearly 140 years. When the club does depart from that arrangement, as with the all claret 2026/27 home shirt inspired by 1960s designs, it generates more debate than any sponsor change ever does.

What Aston Villa Wore Before Claret and Blue

Villa were founded in 1874 by members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Handsworth, and for the first decade the kit was whatever the players could agree on. Early Villa teams turned out in plain white, in blue, and at one point in black shirts carrying a red lion on the chest, which is the closest thing to a first badge the club had. Standardised kit was not a requirement in the way it is now, and small clubs bought whatever cloth was available locally.

That instability was normal for the era. Football League colours were not registered centrally until later, clashes were sorted out on the day, and change strips barely existed. A club settling on a permanent identity in the 1880s was making a statement about being a serious, organised institution rather than a chapel side.

Villa’s timing mattered. They were becoming one of the strongest teams in the country just as the sport professionalised, and William McGregor, a Villa committee member, went on to found the Football League in 1888.

Where the Claret and Blue Actually Came From

The honest answer is that nobody knows, and anyone telling you otherwise is repeating a story rather than a record. No minute book entry survives explaining the decision, which is why several competing accounts have circulated for over a century.

The most commonly repeated version credits the club’s Scottish connections, pointing to McGregor and the heavy Scottish influence on Villa’s early sides. Another theory is practical rather than romantic, suggesting the club simply took what a supplier could provide at a workable price, since claret dye and light blue cloth were both available and the combination was unusual enough to be distinctive. A third account attributes the choice to a specific committee member’s preference, though the name attached varies depending on which retelling you read.

Claret itself is worth pausing on. The word comes from the Bordeaux wine trade, describing a dark red with a purple edge rather than a bright scarlet, and that ambiguity has caused Villa endless problems with manufacturers. There is no single official Pantone reference that has held across the whole history of the club, so the shade has drifted from an almost brown maroon in some eras to a brighter, redder tone in others.

How Villa’s Colours Spread to West Ham, Burnley and Beyond

Villa dominated English football either side of 1900, winning six league titles and multiple FA Cups including the double in 1897, and success bred imitation. Burnley switched to claret and blue in 1910, and the widely accepted reason is straightforwardly that they wanted some of what Villa had. It worked well enough that Burnley have kept the colours ever since.

West Ham’s version is the better story. Thames Ironworks, the club that became West Ham United, are said to have acquired a set of Villa shirts around 1899 through a member of staff who won them from Villa players, variously described as a bet or the outcome of a running race. Whether that happened as told is impossible to verify, but the colours arrived at Upton Park from Birmingham and stayed.

Scunthorpe United took the combination too, and a handful of clubs across the lower leagues and non league use variations. That spread is part of why the pairing reads as traditional rather than as a Villa trademark to a casual viewer, which occasionally frustrates supporters who know exactly where it started.

How the Kit Has Changed From the 1880s to the Current Shirt

The broad shape of the shirt has been stable, but the details tell you the decade instantly. Heavy cotton with a laced collar gave way to lighter cotton in the interwar years, then to polyester from the 1970s onwards, when sleeves shortened and the raglan cut became standard. Sponsors arrived in the early 1980s, badges grew, and the shirt shifted from equipment to merchandise.

Manufacturer changes have driven most of the modern variation. Villa have run through Umbro, Hummel, Asics, Reebok, Diadora, Nike, Macron, Under Armour, the club’s own Luke 1977 label and Kappa, then Castore, before signing with Adidas from the 2024/25 season after quality complaints about the previous supplier. Comparing a run of Aston Villa shirts from different eras side by side is the quickest way to see how much the claret shade itself has moved, because the outline stays familiar while the tone visibly shifts.

Cost has moved too, and quickly. A current adult replica sits at roughly £80 to £85, with the authentic player version around £110 to £120, while retro and reissued shirts typically land in the £40 to £60 range. For collectors, condition and sponsor era matter more than age, and shirts from the 1982 European Cup period carry a premium that has little to do with how they were made.

Sponsorship has reshaped the front of the shirt again recently. Villa’s Betano deal ended alongside the Premier League’s ban on gambling companies as front of shirt sponsors from 2026/27, and the club launched the new home kit without a main sponsor while Visit Rwanda took the sleeve. That leaves an unusually clean claret front, which some supporters have quietly enjoyed more than they expected to.

The thing worth watching over the next few seasons is how far Adidas pushes the template. Villa are now inside the brand’s elite tier, which brings retro Originals treatments and bolder archive references, and the 2026/27 home shirt dropping the light blue sleeves shows the club is willing to test how much of the signature look is negotiable. If you are buying a shirt to keep rather than to wear for a season, the ones that hold their meaning tend to be the ones that get the arrangement right rather than the ones that experiment, which is an argument for the plain claret body and light blue sleeves every time.