FROM WILMSLOW TO MILAN: UMBRO BY SLAM JAM EXCLUSIVE TO END.

Collaboration has become a central part of the industry. Every day, familiar names appear next to each other to launch a new (or old) product. But when there are more than you can pay attention to, the ones worth your time become even more important. They arrive already making sense, because both parties stem from parallel worlds, share values, and can actually add something to the other’s skillset. Umbro and Slam Jam have belonged in that category since 2023, and the latest chapter in their partnership just landed exclusively at END.

Umbro was founded in 1924 in the back room of a Wilmslow pub, where Harold and Wallace Humphreys began making kit for local sides and named the business by condensing their own surname: HUMphreys BROthers. By the mid-thirties they were dressing both teams in the FA Cup final. In 1966 they dressed England.

But arguably the more interesting chapter came later, and largely without the brand's involvement. Through the eighties, the double diamond drifted away from the pitch and into the stands, becoming a mainstay of British terrace culture and it’s been there ever since. 

Slam Jam's authority was built differently, from a shop floor in Ferrara, Italy. When Luca Benini started the business in 1989 it was a distribution operation, importing Stüssy and the wider American underground into Italy for a generation with no other route to it. Since then, Slam Jam has collaborated with Carhartt WIP, Vans, PUMA, AC Milan, and many more, each time carefully handling a brand’s heritage and presenting it through its own signature lens. Codes are referenced rather than reproduced, filtered until they land as contemporary instead of retro.

That instinct shapes the Umbro by Slam Jam capsule, which adapts standout features from across the last few Umbro seasons. Tracksuits in two colourways nod to Umbro’s unrivalled sporting heritage: the lineage is vintage but the proportions modernise them. The masked anorak and its matching cap are the real standouts, fusing archive references with a sense of cutting-edge creativity, underlined by the checked finish to the fabric developed specifically for this limited run.

Umbro by Slam Jam is available now exclusively at END.