Manchester City are ushering in the Lunar New Year with a special kit and clothing collection ahead of the traditional celebrations set to take place next month.
According to the traditional lunisolar Chinese calendar, the New Year is set to begin on Feb. 10. To that end City have prepared the perfect ensemble with a jersey designed to mark the onset of the Year of the Dragon.
JUST LANDED 🐲
— Manchester City (@ManCity) January 18, 2024
Our new Year of the Dragon shirt and capsule collection is available now 🙌
🤝 @pumafootball
Indeed, the 2024 Lunar New Year kit design achieves the unlikely feat of blending centuries of ancient Chinese tradition with the 20th anniversary of City's relocation to the Etihad Stadium along with the vast success they have enjoyed since.
The bespoke shirt design heralds the beginning of the Year of the Dragon -- a mythical creature which symbolises strength, expertise and outrageous good fortune in Chinese mythology; attributes embodied by Pep Guardiola's all-conquering treble winners.
Each Year of the Dragon specifically represents one of the elemental signs -- e.g. Earth, Water, Fire, Metal -- and the 2024 Lunar Year is named after the Wood Dragon. As such, the pale grey shirt is covered in a custom pattern that depicts hand-drawn wood carvings of the dragon, which twists its way around the torso.
These spirals are also said to mirror the large blue "turrets" that stand outside the Etihad Stadium -- prominent architectural features that also inspired the repeating graphic found on City's 2023-24 home jersey. The names and numbers on the reverse of the shirt, modelled by City stars including Jessica Park and Laia Aleixandri, are also displayed using a custom zodiac-inspired typeface that includes a stylised "dragon's tail" flourish.
The kit forms part of a small Year of the Dragon capsule available that also includes a matching track top. The jacket, worn here by City star Jack Grealish, has a large club emblem with the dragon swirling through on the back..
That same symbol also appears on the T-shirt that completes the collection, as worn here by Mateo Kovacic.
This isn't the first time that City have created a special kit to signal the start of the Lunar New Year with Erling Haaland helping to model the 2023 edition, which saw the Year of the Rabbit celebrated with a deep blue and gold moonscape design.
Manchester United were among the first Premier League clubs to release special kit to mark the Lunar New Year, doing so in 2020 with a remarkable design that featured an intricately embroidered dragon pattern on a red faux-silk shirt.
Arsenal then followed suit in early 2021 when they released a dedicated Lunar New Year warm-up shirt celebrating the Year of the Ox -- an ancient symbol of stability, strength and, if the results were anything to go by, dizzying visual cacophony.