Sports and fashion happen in groups. By its very nature, a league comprises several teams within a given sport, and clothes become fashionable when multiple people adopt a style. Both are intensely social activities, facilitating a kind of camaraderie for men, especially Black men. Aside from a family event or Divine Nine fraternity meeting, I’d bet the interests around which Black men regularly convene are clothes and “the game.”
Might this explain the Saturday morning Footlocker ritual? The days when Black men and boys would wake up early, get a fade, then wait in line for the latest kicks, new cleats, or as leisure. What’s more, sports talk is still one of the ways most of us connect, and many have looked up to professional athletes for years as role models. We can credit the tunnel fit for basketball players showing more of themselves to the world; and arrival fits for NFL athletes. But this hasn’t always been the case.
“If you look at something like the NFL, which has a racist history and a contemporary racist legacy, you see that Black men are often positioned in a way that they don’t have control of their bodies,” says Tommy Curry, philosophy professor and Black male studies scholar at University of Edinburgh. On why Black athletes’ sartorial choices are important, he explains that not only in the NFL, but throughout sports, it’s crucial to understand how they’re using clothing to define or even redefine themselves. Underpinning this is a relationship to a league that has “convincingly demonstrated” a lack of care when it comes to their daily lives, according to Curry.
It’s a form of activism, a public and visual insistence on their humanity. And let’s face it: these guys look like they’re having fun. JuJu Smith-Schuster arrived at the 2023 Super Bowl in a Thom Browne skirt, a military-style beret, and motorcycle shades. Stefon Diggs, who was named “Best Dressed Athlete” by Complex last year, plays with sculptural shapes, cropped jackets and drapey clothes—and owns it. And many fans will see their adolescent fashion attempts in Odell Beckham Jr.’s unformed style, bringing to mind the joyous naivete in not knowing the rules and not caring because it makes you feel something.
There’s a best-and-worst-dressed list for everything: award shows, galas, the Houston Rodeo, Wimbledon, the Kentucky Derby, and, indeed, pre-game fits. On TikTok and X, formerly known as Twitter, NFL players’ classic and streetwear-leaning outfits get the most love. However, the ones that veer off the beaten path may inspire dispute, even disappointment. It all comes across as rather invasive.
Still, when some athletes step out of fashion bounds, it can be off-putting for onlookers. Curry invites us to interrogate why that is. “You see Black men constantly playing with constructions of what the masculine and the cool are. And those aren’t purely about looking good. It’s because they have a different kind of body. They understand the way they’ve been positioned,” he explains. When told that an aesthetic choice a Black man is using to present his body—which is completely dehumanized and brutalized in American society—doesn’t land well, he’s curious about the metrics and expectations used to make that judgement.
People rarely are presented as good or bad in certain clothes. The eye is constantly working with our worldview to determine how we see. Perhaps a celebrity wearing an unflattering, poorly-made garment is fair game for critique since they can afford better. The trouble comes in seeing their fashion as flawed because it challenges our shrunken views of acceptable men’s dress. And, of course, athletes’ fashion statements will vary, and they aren’t asking society’s permission to make them. Some tinker with clothes, as Curry says, to question gender norms and broaden the scope of Black masculinity. Others use them to express their interior lives: their emotions, hopes and desires, aspirations, and every other reason people convey messages through clothing.
Writer, professor, and author of The Big Book of Basketball Fashion Mitchell Jackson says fashion is a way for NFL players to have a life outside of the league. Clothing, in his view, allows them to shape a public perception that isn’t solely connected to the NFL. “On Christmas, players dress up with their girlfriends or their wives and kids. You see them pose outside their house with their cars. The fashion allows people to see into a world that isn’t connected to strength and violence,” Mitchell shares.
@blitzfits, a digital platform showcasing NFL fashion, is an effective medium for such exposure. Scroll the feed, and you’ll see an array of expressive outfits on men who’re at once hyper-visible and invisible. Crucial, though, is that these are men reclaiming their images. They’re expanding conceptions of who a Black man is on multiple fronts. When I asked Curry and Jackson what this cultural moment should encourage us to think about, they both emphasized the importance of seeing beauty and individuality in Black men’s lives. That feels like a bolder proposition than it should, but we ought to find the courage to act on it.