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Super Bowl Best PR for 'It' Bags in Ages
Plus, Travis Kelce emerges from the tortured sequins department, and NYFW highlights.
I never would have thought New York Fashion Week would be upstaged by anything happening in Las Vegas. Yet the Super Bowl saw those tasteful black coats and sensible flats groan down the runways in NYC and flipped stealth wealth a giant middle finger.
The game was the monoculture’s premiere event of at least the first quarter of 2024. No award show can come close to touching the mania that football’s finale unleashes upon this nation. Those of us who thought we’d be spending Sunday night swiping through NYC’s latest gray maxi dresses in Vogue Runway, avoiding knowing anything more about football than Taylor Swift has already forced us to absorb, were confronted with several unexpected realities:
Beyoncé is releasing a country album called Act II. She announced it during her Verizon Super Bowl commercial, and was seen at the game wearing a bolo tie. This explains her Grammys look with the cowboy hat from the latest Louis Vuitton men’s show. That wasn’t just a hat — that was a rebrand. I’ve had Texas Hold ‘Em and 16 Carriages playing on rotation all day.
Travis Kelce’s arrivals outfit was being treated like a custom Eras tour look. Amiri designed his sequined bouclé shacket and matching “baggy trousers designed with a soft silhouette and adjustable buttoned ankle,” quothe the press release that hit my inbox 59 minutes before kickoff. On Instagram, Amiri invited us all to “[d]iscover the craftsmanship” behind the look in a video montage set to the sultry music you can imagine Kelce playing in Taylor’s hotel room when he surprises her after a show with a red rose between his teeth. Apparently when he arrived, CBS commented, “The question is: is he going to shine like that on the football field?” The New York Post wrote up the look and went with the headline “Travis Kelce arrives at Super Bowl 2024 in sparkling black suit: ‘Bejeweled’” but they could have gone with: “Travis Kelce arrives at Super Bowl 2024 in sparkling black suit: ‘The Tortured Sequins Department.’”
Taylor Swift wore $695 “crystal slit” jeans by Area. I expected Taylor to be there and react a lot — even when there was nothing to react to — amongst her squad of ladies. I did not expect her to wear something by a brand that just staged a show featuring entire outfits made of googly eyes.
The players’ arrivals were the best PR “It” bags have gotten since Samantha Jones’s failed quest for a Birkin on Sex and the City in 2001.
Stadium arrivals have taken on added significance since Taylor got involved in all of this and a lot more of us started paying attention, whether we wanted to or not. Before this season, the last time I remember really taking note of what a man wore to walk into a football stadium was Tom Brady in 2018. He arrived to the Super Bowl with a dorky haircut and fitted gray coat that had Twitter comparing him to, among other things, a mom who got the wrong latte at Starbucks and wanted to speak to the manager.
Brady tended to go stealth wealth in tasteful (well, hopefully) jackets and close-fit pants by brands like Tom Ford when he strode stadiums in ready-to-wear instead of football stuff. But Kelce and his colleagues have sent that style back to NYFW to wither before fashion people who wish they were looking at, well, something more interesting.
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Whoever runs the Chiefs Twitter feed was ready to rub the team’s fashion in everyone’s faces, posting at 3:17 pm Sunday:
Kansas City Quarterback Patrick Mahomes arrived wearing a gray suit with bare ankles and Christian Louboutin loafers, wheeling a Louis Vuitton trunk with a Louis Vuitton backpack perched on top. Kelce, who has said he spends three hours picking his game day clothes, walked in with his own large Louis Vuitton bag that had plenty of room for his things plus Taylor’s phone, wallet, Aquaphor, and cats. Isiah Pacheco arrived with a Louis Vuitton Keepall plus a smaller ivory bag I couldn’t ID (but if you can, leave a comment!).
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The players who didn’t treat their arrival like a red-carpet moment looked out-of-place. Take 49er Mitch Wishnowsky who showed up carrying a white plastic bag with a black backpack slung over his shoulder, like he was any regular person getting onto a plane at Newark airport. Brock Purdy, the 49ers quarterback, dressed up more than usual in a green plaid suit, again with a blatant naked ankle, a trend that apparently hasn’t died in the NFL yet. People seemed relieved since he usually arrives in T-shirts and casual stuff, like he’s rolling up to any old a food fair. (SportingNews.com even proclaimed in late January, “Brock Purdy is no fashion icon.”)
The players’ bags have been something of a fascination since the NFL’s pre-Taylor days. Last year, Purseblog posted a bag-off between then-Super Bowl opponents the Chiefs and the Eagles. The site did the same thing leading up to Sunday’s game, pitting the Chiefs’ bags against the San Francisco 49ers’, boldly stating, “When it comes to the two teams and the bag game of the players, from what I see, the Chiefs win from this standpoint!”
However, that was before 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey showed up in a double-breasted pinstripe suit carrying a Haut a Courroies (HAC) Rock bag by Hermès, which was widely misconstrued for a Birkin, but roundly enjoyed by fashion fans nonetheless. (The bag resells for around $70,000.)
“It” bags had fallen out of favor for women as stealth wealth took hold of the marketplace, a boon to unidentifiable but expensive stuff by brands like Loro Piana. In recent years, women have seemed more willing to invest in statement shoes, which tend to be less conspicuous than giant brand-obvious shoulder bags. For football players, the enormous bags have a functional purpose — they have to carry whatever clothes and grooming products they’ll need to get glam after the game. If I were a men’s magazine editor, I’d have booked Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce for “what’s in my bag” content long ago. The only reason I can think that these videos haven’t come out is that men’s magazine editors are probably basically extinct by now.
But this was probably the most interesting menswear we’ve seen off a runway in a long time. It was certainly more of a spectacle than watching guys try to pull off the new swishy suits at an award show and looking like Shiv Roy, or just giving up and wearing a boring tuxedo.
Other Loose Threads from Football Land, NYFW, and Beyond
Lady Gaga performed a small private show for NFL owners at the Super Bowl wearing a fabulous silver fringed dress. As amazing as that sounds, the vibe of the whole thing feels sort of “corporate retreat EOD.”
A Daily Mail headline: “Usher ROCKED custom Off-White look with 394,000 CRYSTALS onstage at the star-studded halftime show - as fans make comparisons to the Power Rangers and Backstreet Boys.”
Bryan Yambao, who started his fashion blog in 2004, reminisced about all the fashion weeks he’s attended for The Cut, and it’s delightful: “Derek [Blasberg] is an old fixture! He’s like the furniture. He’s a chandelier! Every time I’m at the fashion shows, I still feel like I don’t belong there. You’re there in your seat, you’re surrounded by famous people, beautiful people, nepo babies, designers. And then there’s me.”
“These weren’t spa clothes,” Vogue reports of the fall 2024 Proenza Schouler show, “but they were swaddling.” Wait — there are spa clothes??
Joseph Altuzarra showed his fifteenth anniversary collection at New York Fashion Week, and, per Fashionista: “He left a copy of Henrik Ibsen's ‘Four Great Plays’ on each seat; in the show notes, he wrote of pulling elements from the theater and the ballet, and of exploring ‘the negotiation between public and private self.’” I guess that explains the clown-core collars.
I asked a fashion friend if he had looked at the Khaite slideshow yet, and he said, “Why bother, you can’t even see the clothes!” Vogue called this out in their review, writing, “[Designer] Catherine Holstein likes a moody set. Pier 61 was pitch black as the crowd assembled at the edges of the massive space. You could barely see through the dim a few seats down the row, let alone make out the people across the runway to gossip about them. Human communion is part of the fashion show experience, and Khaite shows would be more effective if Holstein took that into consideration.” They could have also said, “Lights are part of the fashion show experience, and Khaite shows would be more effective if Holstein turned them on.”
Vogue had model Alex Consani wear the inflatable Rick Owens boots around the office in a viral TikTok. It sort of seems like the staff wanted to find it funny, but didn’t know if that was allowed.
A protester attempted to storm the Coach show via a side door with a sign that read “Let Cows Live.” “But you know what?” WWD writes, “With the kind of youthful rebelliousness Coach plays up on its runways, it felt on-brand.”
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Re: Khaite show - I’m not surprised about the dark vibe. I recently went to the soho store and it was so dark that I could barely see the clothing. Including in the dressing room! I was shocked by the experience tbh. It’s an odd approach to selling clothing but doesn’t seem to stop her from crushing it so what do I know 🤷♀️
“Lady Gaga performed a small private show for NFL owners at the Super Bowl wearing a fabulous silver fringed dress.” I actually haaaaate this for her, what happened to the edgy, anti-establishment Lady Gaga of years past??? 😭