Morgan Gibbs-White is one of the Premier League’s stealth fashion guys, a fact that usually gets glossed over thanks to it being hidden deep in his Instagram. His feed is stacked with photos of his signature fingers-in-ears goal celebration, or beaming post-victory shots in Nottingham Forest’s fire-engine red. The notable absence of fit pics – he’s an early bird at training and consequently misses the arrivals photographer; professionalism beats the need to stunt – means the midfielder’s fashion-guy status isn’t always noticed by fans.
Perhaps because of this, the prospect of a chat about style seems genuinely welcomed. Today, Gibbs-White is dressed in an olive-green Yankees jacket, worn over a navy blue hoodie and grey wool herringbone trousers for a day of rare February sun. We’ve met to chat on a private estate in Nottingham, where we learn our planned scenic riverbank walk is actually a mud track at the moment. We’re both deeply inappropriately dressed; him in suede Loro Piana boots, me in leather loafers.
“I’m such a robot,” says the 25-year-old of standard football interviews. “It’s the same thing, you just repeat yourself all the time.” What’s the go-to football platitude? “Left it all out on the pitch”? “Gave 110 per cent”? Gibbs-White muses for a moment: “I think it’s ‘proud of the boys’.”
That makes sense – ‘the boys’ have done plenty to be proud of lately. After back to back seasons of abject misery, narrowly avoiding relegation twice, Nottingham Forest are flying. At the time of writing, they are third, ahead of Pep’s Manchester City and nipping at Arsenal’s heels.
For Gibbs-White, signing for Forest from Wolves in 2022 wasn’t always easy. “Moving to another city, moving to a new club, they’re all scary changes,” he says as we trek down the path. “The first two seasons, we struggled.”
Those two seasons coincided with another big life change for Gibbs-White and his partner Britney De Villiers: the arrival of their son, Greyson, now 15 months. The combination of weekly defeats on the pitch, living away from family, and restless nights with a newborn (Greyson was not the best sleeper, De Villiers tells me with a wince) proved tough. “Having a baby is the best thing anyone can ever do – but it's also the hardest,” says Gibbs-White. “It really tests a relationship. Me and my missus have struggled a lot with our relationship. It's only now Greyson's getting a little bit older, we're starting to do more things as a family together.
“Going into games the last two seasons, losing every week… it [was] horrible,” says Gibbs-White. “You're down. You're depressed. My missus would be the first one to tell you that the past two seasons, she's hated me. I come home from games angry, upset. She's the one that has to see that side of it. It's not all glory.”
A third season may well have continued in the same trajectory but, to the delight of De Villiers (as well as, of course, the Forest faithful), the team clicked into gear. A new manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, not only heralded the start of a new era but the maturation of Gibbs-White as a player. “It's just been incredible,” he says. “We’ve been winning games home and away. I just really embraced this season of just playing football week in, week out.”
And they’ve been really playing it, too: by mid-March, Forest remained the only team to have beaten runaway leaders Liverpool the entire season. Their 15 wins have ranged from gutsy fightbacks to full-on bludgeonings (see: their 7-0 bullying of Brighton in February). Gibbs-White is on track to get more England caps under Thomas Tuchel, and also to break his own record of goals per season.
But perhaps more importantly, Nottingham is good for Gibbs-White off-field, too. Now the city feels like a home away from home, he says, nodding to the River Trent swimming lazily beside us. “This is where my first child was born. The club has shown me so much love. It's a real warm place.”
It’s clear that, just like football, fashion is emotional for Gibbs-White. When he’s wearing a great outfit, he’s on top of the world. When he’s forced to leave the house wearing something he’s not happy with, it’s grounds for a proper sulk. (Both Gibbs-White and De Villiers mention his bad outfit-induced mood swings to me on separate occasions.)
One thing that becomes increasingly obvious is, in a world of tracksuits and logomania, Gibbs-White is a man who thinks deeply about what he wears – even if you’re not seeing it constantly on social media (“I do need to start putting more fits out there, just to let people know that I've not gone to sleep”).
His love of fashion is both instinctual and intensely granular. When I ask him about a go-to outfit, Gibbs-White requests both the hypothetical weather forecast and the destination before he answers. (For a mild spring day with his family: slim-soled Maison Margiela Tabi loafers, wool trousers, a white T-shirt, brown knit vest, About:Blank sunglasses and a Patek Philippe Calatrava rose gold watch with a brown alligator strap).
Specificity like that comes from experience. Both a maximalist and an impulse buyer, Gibbs-White loves shopping and is liable to follow his impulses wherever they take him. “If me and my missus get a weekend away somewhere, my first thought is to go shopping,” he says. “I just like exploring different things, seeing different fits, seeing how things fit. I get a real buzz out of it. You know that saying, men always get fed up when shopping — but I'll go shopping for my missus.”
It isn’t so much hoarding or overconsumption as the fact that Gibbs-White just really loves clothes. He is a true fashion nerd. He researches his brands (his favourites right now are Acne Studios, Aime Leon Dore, About:Blank and Studio Nicholson). He stalks the accounts of guys with style he’s into (NBA point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and NFL wide receiver Stefon Diggs are at the top of the list). He looks for holes in his wardrobe to fill, and thinks deeply about shapes and shades. (Although, there aren’t that many holes. He has over 275 pairs of shoes — he counted.) He gets almost everything tailored, to the extent that his alterations guy doesn’t even need him to try anything on any more — his frame is seared into memory.
“I can get really carried away with it,” says Gibbs-White. “I put the little one to bed. I'll go on my phone and I could be sat there for two, three hours, just scrolling, looking at fashion, just having a look at different ideas, different fits.”
“Everyone is so different in their own way,” he says. “That's why I'll never, ever criticise someone's fashion.”
Never? I prod. We’d all like to think of our judgement as being saintly, but let’s be honest, not every player is making it to @footballerfits. “I would never say it to their face!” says Gibbs-White. “But that's how they dress. That's how they express themselves. That's what they think looks good. And no one can ever tell them that their opinion is wrong.”
Our time wrapping up, we trudge back up the bank to where De Villiers and Greyson are waiting. “You'll never please everybody. It's about being true to yourself. It's just having fun and exploring,” he says.
Kind of like life? Gibbs-White nods. “Just like life.”
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