Beyond Game Day: The Intersection of Sports and Fashion

The thrills of the World Cup have come to a close and as I immersed myself in the world of sports for one week, I began to ponder on the intersection of sports and fashion. From the athletes to the coaches to the fans cheering in the stands, how does fashion impact each sector of the sport, and why does it have an impact at all? This question doesn’t stop at soccer; it spans across all sports all the way from football to tennis, the relationship between athleticism and fashion cannot be ignored.

Attending Auburn has provided me with a pretty good understanding of this concept. With athleisure being the daily uniform of the majority of the student body and gamedays in the Fall being an excuse to dress to the 9’s, Auburn’s campus is a pretty clear example of how fashion and sports directly impact one another. It is almost law to dress your best at football games, to do a full face of makeup, buy a new orange and blue matching set that you can only wear to one game— after that, it will just sit in the back of your closet until one of your friends decides to wear it to a game two years later. Without the fashion, there is no football in the South. The two exist with one another.

And the same can be said for events outside of the South and off of the football field. Tunnel walks in the NBA, for example, have become something similar to a fashion show, where players show off their best outfit before the game, usually sponsored by a luxury fashion house like Louis Vuitton or Off-White. Fans look forward to these moments, lifting the players up to the heights of style icons, running to the nearest store or rushing to open their laptops to replicate the outfit as best they can. When the Off-White Jordan x Nike collab was released, it quickly made up a whopping 1/4 of Off-White’s total sales for the year, a testament to the impact of fashion on sports fans.

The world of sports has brought us some of our favorite fashion icons, like Serena Williams who has attended the coveted Met Gala seven times and even co-chaired the exclusive event. Williams solidified herself as a fashion mogul early in her tennis career, her tennis outfits made her stand out among her opponents, be that a funky tennis dress or a head full of beads, Williams was not afraid to make a statement on the courts. She even attended fashion school in the early 2000s, even further solidifying that fashion and sports go hand-in-hand.

So, we know the players and the fans feel inclined to show their style at the games, but what about the coaches? What happened to the overdressed coach, screaming on the sidelines in a suit and tie? College basketball and coaches in suits used to be two peas in a pod. Three-piece Armani suits were seen regularly on the sidelines, despite basketball coaches being some of the most active sideline participants, coaches at the time were spending upwards a semester of college tuition on a sideline suit.

But maybe it didn’t make sense. And maybe that is what made it so good.

It may be counterintuitive for a sports coach to have the same wardrobe as a finance bro in New York City, but it was fun, classy, and professional. Just in the same way that it doesn’t really make sense to do a full face of makeup and wear three-inch heels to a football game, but we do it anyway because fashion doesn’t always have to be the most practical option. Sometimes getting dressed up is just worth it, if you don’t dress up for a sports game as a fan or a coach, then when will you ever dress up?

Is classy, fun, fashion reserved for wedding guests and Sunday morning church?

When we don’t take opportunities to dress up, things get boring. Imagine how much more interesting basketball would be if every coach was still wearing that three-piece Armani suit instead of the same practice gear the players have in their locker room. Imagine how boring gamedays would become without the joys of planning your outfits weeks in advance.

And above all, these choices say something about us.

Basketball coaches wearing a pinstriped suit on the sidelines would say a lot about who they are, showing much more personality than a uniformed quarter zip with their schools’ logo on the breast. A tennis player wearing a Stella McCartney x Adidas tennis dress from 2005, tells us how that player views fashion in respect to their sport. And a fan in the stands wearing their Sunday best feels like a declaration that fashion is relevant, even in the student section of a SEC football game.

So, the next time the world tunes into a game, pay attention to the fashion surrounding the players, coaches, and fans. Perhaps it will tell you how they view fashion and how they view the game.