The women’s game is expanding at an unprecedented rate, and with that expansion comes a certain freedom for clubs to define not only what the game is, but what it can be. Step forward Como Women, who continue to break new ground as a contemporary cultural platform, not just a football club.
There’s an entirely new cultural resonance building around women’s football, and Como Women continue to be at the heart of it. On Valentine’s Day, they unveiled a collaboration with Milan-based tailor‑made beauty lab CITY LAB Cosmetics, a limited‑edition lip balm co‑created with first-team players. But the tangible outcome, while beautifully executed, isn’t really the story. The real headline sits behind the formula: a club deliberately using unexpected cultural spaces to define what a women’s football team can be.
This is not a one-off curiosity or a cute seasonal tie‑in. It’s part of a broader, intentional shift. Como Women are shaping themselves as a contemporary cultural platform – fluid, expressive, and unbound by the traditional frameworks that have long constrained the women’s game. The lip balm is simply the latest medium. The message? Women’s football doesn’t need permission to occupy new territory.
Where the game has historically been boxed into performance metrics, comparisons to the men’s game, or reductive narratives of growth, Como Women are exploring different languages entirely. Sport, fashion, beauty, lifestyle, creativity – these aren’t sidelined arenas; they’re extensions of identity. And the club is using them to build something distinct, modern, and unmistakably independent.
The process behind the product matters as much as the outcome. At CITY LAB’s Brera store, Como Women’s players didn’t just lend their names or faces, they took part in a genuinely immersive creation experience. Colour selection, active ingredients, fragrance notes, texture refinement, packaging choices, and even the hands-on production phase were shaped by the team.
It’s a detail that shifts the project away from the transactional world of football x lifestyle collabs. This wasn’t a brand gifting a brief to athletes; it was a co-authored exercise in identity-making. The players weren’t performers or ambassadors. They were collaborators, designers, and storytellers.
For a club determined to build its image around authenticity and agency, that matters. It’s the opposite of surface-level marketing. It’s footballers stepping into an unfamiliar space and claiming it with confidence.
Look at Como Women’s feed, their partnerships, their visual language, their tone – everything points toward a club actively engineering a world, not just running a team.
Nicola Verdun, the club’s CEO, frames it plainly: women’s football needs “new languages.” And this is one of them. "Bringing together two worlds that may seem distant – football and beauty – means presenting our sport in a fresh, authentic, and contemporary way,” She explained. “As an independent Club, we want to play an active role in the growth of this movement, also through the creation of innovative projects that speak to girls and women, bringing them closer to football in a natural and inclusive way.”
Beauty becomes a storytelling tool. Creativity becomes an entry point for new audiences. Lifestyle becomes a connector between football and the wider cultural ecosystem. It’s a deliberate shift toward independence; a club choosing not to be defined in proximity to the men’s game, but in relation to the communities and cultures that speak to modern women.
From Mercury13’s early ambitions to this latest collaboration, Como Women are crafting a blueprint more clubs will study: a model where identity is shaped as much outside the pitch as on it.
Partnering with an independent brand like CITY LAB makes the collaboration feel grounded rather than corporate. CITY LAB’s CEO Gianmarco Mammì describes cosmetics as “an authentic and participatory journey,” which mirrors Como Women’s own approach to club-building. Both entities value creativity, independence, and narrative, and this is what gives the collaboration its cultural substance.
It’s not about beauty for beauty’s sake; it’s about footballers existing in spaces that reflect who they are beyond the sport.
It’s also about expanding what the sport can look like – the tones, the textures, the references, the emotions – without defaulting to legacy or compromise. If the women’s game has spent years fighting for visibility, this is a club showing what happens when you go one step further: you build a universe people want to step into.
A lip balm feels like a small thing. But in Como Women’s hands, it becomes a cultural artefact: a symbol of experimentation, collaboration, and the soft power of identity.
This is the club saying: Women’s football doesn’t need to mirror anything. It can lead. It can shape culture. It can set the tone. And sometimes, that tone comes with a fragrance, a shade, and a texture chosen by the players themselves.
Como Women aren’t just changing how the women’s game is played, they’re changing how it’s imagined and experienced.
Photography courtesy of Como Women, Valentina Luraghi and Raphael Anelli.
Produced in limited quantities, the lip balm is available for pre-order via the “Labbra d’Autore” ("Signature Lips") section of the CITY LAB Cosmetics website, with availability open until 20 February.
