Ripped jeans and plaid shorts give way to designer fashions at the chess board

Fashion and design are not the first words that come to mind when you think about tournament chess players.

Take Canadian grandmaster Anton Kovalyov, who sparked an international incident a few years ago after wearing the same pair of plaid shorts every day at a major tournament in Tbilisi, Georgia. When an organizer asked him to change into long pants, he said he hadn’t packed any for the trip and ended up withdrawing from the event.

The international chess federation has a liberal dress code, but draws the line at torn pants, cut-off shorts, unclean clothes, sunglasses and sport caps. Trickier for organizers to prove is how often the clothes have been washed.

This makes Alireza Firouzja’s recent announcement all the more interesting. The world’s Number 4 player, a touted future world chess champion, said he is pursuing a career in fashion design alongside his chess playing.

“It’s improving every day and, yes, it’s kind of a real profession,” he told a chess streamer recently.

The world’s top player, Magnus Carlsen, doesn’t think that’s unusual. He and actress Liv Tyler modelled a line of clothing from the Dutch company G-Star a decade ago.

“I’d be very open to weaning some of his (Firouzja’s) designs in the future,” he said on his YouTube channel.