Dressed in sleek black jerseys in their picturesque stadium perched on a lagoon, the Venice soccer team was taking a beating.

A defender slipped on the turf, and the opposing team, from Florence, scored an easy goal. A Venice striker sent a kick soaring so high over the crossbar that it seemed aimed at the Adriatic Sea. The team’s captain was forced off with an ankle injury.

When Florence went 4-1 ahead in the game last month, some supporters left the stadium early. “Change the defense, change everything!” Ettore Saramin, 75, shouted. “They are humiliating us!”

Venezia FC lost 4-2.

But as the mood sank at the floating stadium, off the pitch the hype around the club kept soaring.

On Instagram, the team’s promotional rollouts are a gallery of gritty Italian glam. Their kit has become a cult style hit. All sorts of influencers, models and celebrities — the Libertines singer Pete Doherty, the bass player Victoria De Angelis from the Italian rock band Maneskin, the British artist Corbin Shaw — have worn the Venezia FC jersey, turning a provincial soccer team into a fashion sensation.

“It’s really becoming a cool thing,” said Guilherme Torres, who works in an art gallery in São Paulo and was wearing a team jersey at an art fair in Buenos Aires last month.