NFL players were paying attention too. They wanted their own tunnel. Or some of them did, anyway—Odell Beckham Jr., Cam Newton, a handful of others. Then more. “It’s very new,” says Kyle Smith, the NFL’s recently appointed in-house fashion editor. “When I started working as a stylist for the NFL Network in 2019, nobody talked about what the players were wearing. Because mostly they were wearing, you know, whatever. Sometimes there’d be a flashy suit, and that would surprise people.” Today, the NFL is actively boosting its swagged-out fashion scene, launching its own style-focused Instagram—one of several new initiatives led by Smith—and broadcasting pregame interviews to showcase the ’fits of clotheshorse stars like Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
“As an agent, one thing you always impress on your clients is that there is inherent value in being seen and being respected outside your sport,” explains Tom Chapman, a partner at mega-agency WME Sports, which represents Tiafoe, among many others. “So how do you do that? If you want to build a persona that lasts past what—let’s face it—can be a very short career, fashion can help. So players are investing more and more into their look. And the NBA and the NFL, to their credit, they’ve done a great job giving them a platform, and it’s been good for everyone.
“So now we’re asking ourselves,” Chapman continues, “golf, tennis, other sports—how do they catch up with that? What do their tunnels look like?”
Smith was not, until a few years ago, a football fan. Sports in general, not his thing. He started his career assisting the celebrity stylist Karla Welch. It wasn’t until he happened to get a job dressing football players—which was, at first, “just a job”—that he began to think, Oh—this is interesting. He was struck by how extraordinarily hard these men worked. “And, like, 90 percent of them, you’d never recognize their faces, because they’re wearing helmets during the game, they’re just part of the team,” Smith notes. “I don’t know, it was refreshing.”
Likewise, designer Willy Chavarria had an ambivalent relationship to sport. “It interested me aesthetically,” he says. “I’ve always been obsessed with the way people dress to assimilate into different groups to express their identities—and team sports are such an example of that. Yankees, Lakers, whatever. In Chicano culture that’s a staple, an oversize football jersey. Doesn’t matter if you’ve ever watched a game.”
Cheeky versions of those jerseys showed up in Chavarria’s spring 2025 RTW show, which paid homage to America’s Chicano community. (Indeed, the name of the collection was América.) More sportiness was to be found in the debut of the Adidas Originals x Willy Chavarria collaboration that closed the show, with Olympian Noah Lyles serving as one of the models. The aesthetics of sport still interest Chavarria; now, the athletes interest him too.
