(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Ryan Stone, a 51-year-old real estate investor in San Diego, thought the athleisure brand ALO was mostly “yoga clothes for women” until he noticed Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler wearing it. “Some of these guys dress more streetwear, but Jimmy is a bit more mainstream,” he says. Seeing Butler decked out in the brand's sleek, workout-ready apparel made him reconsider: “Yeah, I'm gonna go out and buy a bunch of ALO workout clothes now.”
These days the most influential displays of men's sartorial swagger won't occur on the red carpets of Hollywood or the catwalks of Paris or Milan. They'll begin on Sept. 7, when Kansas City Chiefs stars Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce walk down the tunnel toward the locker room to kick off this year's NFL schedule. They'll ratchet up a notch on Oct. 18, when NBA games begin.
Athletes have been stiff-arming their way into the spotlight by stepping up their fashion game for at least a decade, bringing high-end runway looks to people who might otherwise be shielded from any overt rag trade influence. Today the pregame locker room entrance has become a bona fide media moment, with outfits covered as breathlessly by online fans as Ryan Seacrest does outside the Oscars.
And normally risk-averse shoppers are happily going along for the ride—and enlisting stylists for help. Nicole Pollard Bayme, who provides fashion consulting for business-world VIPs at her company Lalaluxe, says sports stars come up regularly in conversation with her male clients about how they'd like to dress.
She mentions a young tech chief executive officer and father whose uniform consisted mostly of casual slip-on Vans and tech-fabric pants. “During one of our sessions, he mentioned [Golden State Warriors guard] Steph Curry wearing Chelsea boots with slacks,” she says, “and it was the perfect opportunity to nudge him toward a new direction.”
She got boots from George Esquivel, known for making custom footwear for NBA players who often need extended sizes. She also explained that most athletes have their clothes tailored, so she brought in custom jeans from Frame and trousers from Saint Laurent. Her client even started wearing a bag from the Italian label Bottega Veneta after he saw Phoenix Suns guard Devin Booker carry one.
“That evolution demonstrates how a little inspiration can spark a transformative change,” she says.
Athletes have come a long way from the days of ill-fitting jumbo suits that looked like they were bought on a whim at a strip mall, says Michael Fisher, vice president at trend forecasting agency Fashion Snoops in New York. “For many men, athletes have been the top influencer in their lives. It only makes sense that seeing these guys be comfortable with [oversize] directional silhouettes, colors and patterns would impact everyday trends for the same consumers.”
Courtney Mays, a stylist who works with perennial All-Star Chris Paul and other NBA players, agrees with Fisher's assessment. “A lot of guys know who Steph Curry is, know who Chris Paul is,” she says.
There's a huge range of approaches among athletes that can appeal to just about anyone's taste, she says. Someone like Miami Heat veteran Kevin Love dresses in more classic Ralph Lauren Americana, whereas Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma wears extremely avant-garde designs from the runway. “You can find yourself in one of these guys and emulate that,” Mays says.
Most men tend to be inspired by a specific item rather than an entire look, says Andrew Weitz, who works with high-net-worth individuals on their wardrobe choices at his company Weitz Effect. “It's more about the individual pieces,” he says. “I find guys don't gravitate to things that are distinguishable, but more like an elevated version of a casual look.”
Or, to put it in 2023 terms: quiet luxury.
“When I started [in 2002], high fashion and the fashion that athletes wore were two separate things,” says Jason Arasheben, who owns the high-end jewelry shop Jason of Beverly Hills. “Now that's merged.”
Arasheben has long sold diamond-encrusted accessories at eye-popping prices to athletes, but in recent years he's been fielding calls from consumers who want a specific style they've seen on a player or something similar.
“These [NBA players] have, what, 82 games a season? That's 82 times to walk in and out of the stadium. And now it's like once a week, a few times a week, that I get a call saying, ‘Hey, I saw so-and-so wearing this bracelet or this watch. Do you have a version of it?' ” They're not only inspiring the masses, Arasheben adds, “they're influencing the choices that creative directors at big fashion houses are making. They're driving trends.”
In May, Prada signed Chinese basketball player Yang Shuyu as a brand ambassador in an attempt to move away from pop and film celebrities toward athletes. Dries Van Noten dressed his models in oversize jerseys for his spring-summer 2023 collection. Kuzma recently sat front row at runway shows by Rick Owens and Kenzo, and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton was spotted at a Louis Vuitton show.
Although there's a history of athletes embracing fashion—David Beckham, Dennis Rodman, Walt Frazier and Joe Namath all come to mind—the current frenzied moment is born of social media. With their godlike physiques and astronomical paychecks, they're better suited to luxury fashion than most, and yet the industry mostly ignored them.
“These guys were always dressing,” Mays says. “Fashion has been part of basketball culture since the 1970s, '80s, when guys like Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain were walking into the arena in fur coats and fedoras! But it wasn't as big of a thing. Now, because everything is captured in real time on social media, consumers are being exposed to it in a new way.”
In other words, Namath's fur coats may have marked an iconic moment, but men weren't rushing out to buy one the way they did when Weitz dressed his client Tom Brady in a lightweight Harrington jacket by Tom Ford for his arrival at the 2021 Super Bowl. (The item, which can cost as much as $5,000, promptly sold out.)
Now there's a cottage industry covering this overlap, from Instagram accounts @LeagueFits (963,000 followers), the NFL-focused @BlitzFits (99,000) and @MLB.Fits (85,000), among others. The result has been a sort of feedback loop where players dress up for the accounts that cover them and then the accounts have more news to cover.
The top athletes get the most attention. “Players like LeBron [James] will always perform well,” says Chad Avery, who's turned his account @NBAFashionFits (238,000 followers) from a casual fan page into a serious force. “He's not the biggest risk taker or the best dressed but definitely the most popular player, so that makes a difference.”
For Stone, there's a psychological component to dressing well. “The way these guys dress is a direct reflection on the type of game they play,” he says. “You know, LeBron, Jimmy Butler, when they walk into the arena, they look good, like they're going to do business. LeBron takes the game seriously and dresses like it. And the results show.”
We may have only scratched the surface of athlete couture. Most stylists and consumers note that, though some NFL and baseball stars are popular, NBA players still dominate this aspect of the business. And America has yet to really embrace the most stylish sport of all: soccer.
Memorable Moments in Sports Style
Nov. 11, 1973Quarterback Joe Namath was already a megastar after leading the New York Jets to victory as the heavy underdogs in the 1969 Super Bowl. A shoulder injury kept him out for most of the '73 season, but his sideline fur coat was such a signature he was immortalized in one on the cover of .
Oct. 2, 1995When the talented, flamboyant and occasionally exasperating Dennis Rodman was traded to Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, he became a key part of its three-peat 1996-98 seasons. Yet he was just as entertaining off the court, often wearing crop tops and, famously, a wedding dress to promote his 1996 memoir, . Chad Avery from @NBAFashionFits says Rodman “really embraced the whole ‘Be yourself' and ‘Step outside the box' feeling” during the Jordan heyday.
Oct. 17, 2005Two weeks before the NBA's 2005 season, then-Commissioner David Stern announced a dress code that banned most clothing associated with hip-hop culture: Timberland boots, jerseys and chains (as seen on Allen Iverson here). Critics called it racist, but today the code is hailed as the catalyst for the “tunnel walk” phenomenon, where cameras document players' outfits before games.
May 31, 2018For the first game of the 2018 NBA Finals, LeBron James suited up the entire Cleveland Cavaliers squad in Thom Browne's signature shrunken suits. Yet James stole the show, wearing the designer's matching shorts and gray calf-length socks. Fashion Snoops' Michael Fisher calls the four-time MVP “one of the forerunners of influencing trends when he started wearing those suits for the NBA playoffs.”
Nov. 22, 2021Kyle Kuzma got roasted when he arrived to a game in an extra-extra-extra-extra-large pink Raf Simons sweater with sleeves that, despite his 6-foot-9-inch frame, hung down near his knees. But “it helped start a lot of conversations about a return to the super-baggy shapes from the '90s,” Fisher says. Kuzma got the last laugh: This January the Washington Wizards released a bobblehead version of the now-celebrated look, and this summer Kuzma sat in the front row at Paris Fashion Week.
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