The World’s Best Bar 2025 and Hong Kong’s reigning champion, a mortadella sandwich people fly in for, and now, a collaboration with an Italian sportswear icon? Bar Leone’s achievements are stacked.
If you’ve been to the beloved Bridges Street bar, you’ll know what football means to the place, and to co-founder Lorenzo Antinori. “Football is religion,” he tells us. It’s a feeling he shares with many fellow Italians, and it’s the reason this two-piece capsule with Kappa is so major. “For anyone who grew up in Italy in the nineties, Kappa is not just a brand but almost like a collective memory of Roma winning the Scudetto wearing Kappa — the year of Totti, Batistuta, Montella,” explains Antinori. “So to put the Leone brand on a Kappa jersey is personal, and it pays tribute to that era.”
“Our ambition is for Bar Leone to grow into a true lifestyle brand, from the room on Bridges Street to what you wear and how you live. This capsule is our first step onto that pitch — and there was no better teammate for it than Kappa!”
Titled “From the Counter to the Pitch”, it features a duo of iconic Kappa silhouettes reimagined for the ultimate Bar Leone wardrobe. The Bar Leone x Kappa EROI jumper is a slim-fit carmined red quarter zip with “LEONE” emblazoned across the chest in orange, while the Bar Leone x Kombat Jersey pays homage to football’s golden era with a reimagining of the pioneering hyper-elastic shirt worn by the Italian National Team in the 2000 European Championship. ““The jersey carries that historic significance, and in the Leone context it is also about mindset,” says Antinori. “We want everyone who wears it to carry that champion mentality.” Bar Leone’s version arrives with contrasting carmine red stitching, a Leone crest, and “From the Counter to the Pitch” script stretched across the backside.
The campaign shoot for the Bar Leone x Kappa collaboration is set not just at the bar itself, but the familiar streets beyond its doors, and on a public pitch in Hong Kong. It’s an intentional choice that upholds the philosophy central to Bar Leone itself. “Cocktail popolari means cocktails for the people, and this collection was created with exactly the same spirit,” says Antinori. “We celebrate pop culture, and we believe it is the people who make it. This is also why we shot the campaign on the streets of our own neighbourhood, not in a studio. We want to dedicate it to our little neighbourhood.”
The Bar Leone x Kappa capsule collection is now available exclusively at barleonehk.com/shop, with shipping available worldwide. Are you scoring a piece?
Editor
Alyanna Raissa J. Payos
