Another dress-code kerfuffle has been dusted up in the world of international chess. Dutch player Anna-Maja Kazarian, ranked no. 7,765 globally among active players, recently revealed that she received a €100 ($111) fine from the International Chess Federation (FIDE) for wearing a pair of Burberry sneakers that an arbiter at the World Rapid and Blitz Championships deemed to be a “sports shoe” instead of a regular sneaker.
The shoe in question is a Burberry model called the Kingsly. It’s a high-class takeoff on a mixture of lower-end PF Flyers and Pro-Keds canvas sneakers. Burberry doesn’t sell it anymore, but versions of it still float around online resale websites for hundreds of dollars. In either case, its underlying technology hasn’t been considered cutting edge since the Depression.
The FIDE dress code for the tournament does explicitly forbid “sport’s shoes,” but what that means isn’t quite clear. When Germany’s Elisabeth Pähtz, a grandmaster, questioned FIDE CEO Emil Sutovsky on X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) about possible inconsistencies in the application of the dress code, he not-quite-helpfully clarified that “not all sneakers are banned” and that players should “kindly check the wording” of the rule.
“This is not something you want to run on and do any sports with,” Kazarian said in a Dec. 28 YouTube video about her time at the tournament. “They’re just sneakers, Burberry-branded. Not that the brand matters, but I thought they were fancy, classy shoes that you don’t use for sports.”
The New York Times reported that several other players at the tournament received fines for sneakers that were too sporty.
Earlier closet clashes
Kazarian is not the first player to run into trouble because of the clothes they wore (or refused to wear) at a FIDE tournament.
🧕 In 2017, Argentina’s Carolina Lujan skipped the World Championships because it was being held in Iran and all female players were going to be mandated to wear hijab head coverings. “I’m not ready to be forced to use it,” she wrote online. “Also, due to the misinformation that is on their culture, a possible confusion could send us to jail or worse.”
🩳 That same year, Canada’s chess federation made a complaint to FIDE after Anton Kovalyov chose to forfeit his spot in the world championship rather than change out of shorts he had already been playing in for two rounds.
🦺 In 2019, junior world champion Parham Maghsoodloo of India told a commentator that he hadn’t worn his “lucky” jacket, a black puffer vest, because “on the first day an arbiter told me: ‘Never wear this again!” He suggested that perhaps one day he’d be so good that they’d change the rules for him.