What makes an outfit good? Is it the right pieces worn in the right combination? Is it in the proportions and the silhouette? Or is it about color, texture, and pattern? Maybe the answer lies in brands—after all, people are more likely to ask “Who makes that?” rather than “What’s that made of?” Does it simply come down to whether others around you like what you’re wearing? Or if you do? I might argue that a good outfit is one that is functional and comfortable, but we all know that isn’t how it works these days.
With the NBA back in season, the esteemed players of the most stylish league in all of sports offer another answer: A good outfit is one that gets the most eyeballs on it. The tunnel that players walk through upon their arrival at the arena has become a veritable fashion runway, where the athletes proudly flex their most daring fits for the benefit of social media. In theory, this has been a very cool advancement for both the sport and for fashion, giving the game’s biggest stars another chance to do some off-court personal-brand building, while also allowing labels and designers to get some serious exposure for their most outré gear. It’s also just a great opportunity to stunt, which is always fun, the pinnacle of this having been when LeBron James kitted out the entire Cleveland Cavaliers squad in custom Thom Browne.
These tunnel fits have spawned an entire cottage industry for the professional stylists, agents, and brands that work with the players to concoct the extraordinarily high-profile looks. And it’s made the NBA a kind of bellwether for menswear in general, with other sports—the NFL, especially—rushing to follow suit.
Unfortunately, it’s recently become clear to me that a league of freakishly tall and viciously competitive professional athletes is not the best environment for good outfits to flourish, and tunnel fits have gone too far. And it appears I’m not the only one who feels this way. As I was writing this column, Kyle Kuzma—the Washington Wizards’ “ain’t no fucking way” fit god himself—announced that he has officially retired from the tunnel catwalk. “I don’t want to be a part of that type of community where you have to put on a fit,” Kuzma told Vogue. “I’m really taking a back seat to all of that.” Rather than his usual array of freaky leather ensembles and architectural jackets, Kuzma will be donning a variation of the same gray sweat suit for all 82 regular season games this year. “I can speak from experience that when you’re a younger player,” he continued, “you don’t want to wear the same thing twice. A lot of times we get played into thinking, oh, we gotta switch it up, we gotta buy something new. And now we’re just buying clothes to impress people or to stand out. It’s ludicrous.”
That’s an observable dynamic at play with these tunnel fits: The more advanced players—the risk takers, the true enthusiasts—set the agenda. In turn, they push their less sartorially inclined peers to walk further out on the fashion gangplank. Those aesthetically disadvantaged players wind up hiring stylists to dress them. The job of the stylist is not merely to put together a good outfit. They have a different agenda. What they think makes an outfit good is not always the same as what most people think. But they are tremendously influential, because they have the ability to put clothes on some very visible and very rich men. So, in turn, brands and designers will capitulate to the stylists’ outfit inclinations, and wind up making lots of silly matching sets in bright colors and suits that look like something a Ken doll would wear to prom.
The tunnel is a vacuum: The players are only wearing these outfits on that minutes-long walk from the team bus to the locker room, with no one else physically around to see them except their teammates and various support staff. When you see celebrities in wild fits in other settings—the Biebers out on a date night, say, or Rihanna and A$AP Rocky at a gala—those folks still have to live their lives in the clothes they’re wearing, which means their outfits are restricted by at least some measure of practicality. Without any of those real-life constraints, the only purpose these tunnel fits really serve is to create an image. Stylists—and the players themselves—are looking for outfits that will make the most impact on social media in the minimum amount of time.
