“I design and make clothes for a football club that doesn’t exist”: Ken Sakata and the power of the post-ironic
By Freja Newman
11 April, 2023
It was a Wednesday night. I was scrolling through the constant flow of content on Tik Tok, slowly reaching the point where every video began merging together into one chaotic edit of popular culture. However, one phrase stuck out to me.
“Hi, my name’s Ken Sakata and I design and make clothes for a football club that doesn’t exist.”
I stopped scrolling. This was some good marketing. Then again, when I listened to him more, this wasn’t really marketing at all. It was just raw honesty and creativity, and people loved it. I loved it. I had to learn more.
Sakata, while a surgeon by trade, also designs and produces sportswear in Melbourne for Queensland Football Club (QFC); a club he completely made up. While he hardly gets any free time between medicine and QFC, he gave up what time he did have to talk to me.
“Queensland Football Club is a concept brand designing and manufacturing sportswear for a vaguely successful, fictional 90’s sports team,” Sakata said. “I call it a post-ironic sportswear brand because both the customer and myself are both unsure whether it’s a joke. There’s an element of sincerity behind it so it’s beyond irony.”
During the pandemic, Sakata talked about losing his mind working at the frontline and yearning for something that was completely dumb and fun. He needed an escape from reality at the time. What began as Sakata joking online about quitting his job and starting a career in professional football at the age of 35, soon developed into him selling sports merchandise for a team that doesn’t exist.
There isn’t anything like this brand.
“It serves entertainment in the guise of clothes,” Sakata said. He described it as a mixture of an art project as the creative ideas behind it are merged with graphic and fashion design. An element of this entertainment also comes from the marketing. Sakata has put transparency as one of the main features of the brand.
Brands “generally try to sell you on the fact that ‘we are real and we are authentic and we are original’ when actually the reverse is true,” Sakata notes. “So what I’m trying to do is the opposite. I’m telling you that the brand is fake.”
And what happens when this fake brand, while ludicrous, is also genuinely concerned about local manufacturing and community consciousness? While it seems bizarre and funny, it’s also refreshing.
“I’m genuinely concerned about local manufacturing… and about my customers being considered in the design process,” Sakata said. “I genuinely try and make things as community focused as I can with donations and with using local industries.”
While Sakata noted the difficulties of studying the technicalities of running a fashion business and learning new communications skills, the whole process has been rewarding in more ways than one.
“It’s been very rewarding working with people, learning about different industries, learning about the history of Australian manufacturing and being able to engage in the community in a different way,” Sakata said. “I think medicine is, you know, inherently altruistic, but to help the community in a different way has been exciting.”
By marrying this sense of humour and post-irony with company practices that are actually making an impact, QFC has resonated with customers, particularly young people, who are over the feeling of “being ‘had’ in some way by companies, by narratives, by marketing spins,” Sakata said. “There is a complete lack of authenticity at every level of society. So, this is seen seemingly a very refreshing take on things.”
The internet is inundated with gurus or tips or hacks about the best way to start your own business. In Sakata’s experience, life and QFC is a direct rebuttal to that.
“Don’t be obsessed with working smart,” Sakata noted. “It should be about working hard and reiterating based on the things that you see and the things that you’ve experienced. You’ll always have time to work smart after you’ve started.”
He reflects on how most people are afraid to start a new thing and that’s perfectly reasonable. However, “the important thing is to start,” he said. You’ll learn as you go.
Sakata has proven how post-ironic marketing is perhaps the most authentic form. He has proven how our society, and young people especially, long for humour, but also impact. They long for community and advice. He has proven how people want to be a part of a narrative that they can control or understand. Ken Sakata has created something unique. Unique, not only for his customers, but also for himself.
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Freja Newman 