And then there was the team’s most famous player (and America’s most famous boyfriend), Travis Kelce. He chose a beige suit by Fear of God, the California label by Jerry Lorenzo. During the last four years, Lorenzo, a Black designer, has renegotiated the stringent confines of the men’s suit for several generations of fashion fanatic men.
Kelce wore the double-breasted blazer perfectly: boxy and big, and with the confidence to pull off something that still looks unusual, even new. But his pants — my God, what happened? They were as clingy as stretch chinos, pulling at his legs instead of draping them. That’s fine if the rest of the suit were fitted that way, but the oversize jacket with the too small, and perhaps too short, pants looked like an oddball style statement when it could have been a proposal of a new kind of soft and subtle masculinity. We shouldn’t be able to see his iPhone in his suit pants pocket.
Since Hedi Slimane introduced ultra-skinny suits at Dior Homme in the early 2000s, men’s clothes, especially pants, have shrunk and shrunk. It may sound crazy that a then-obscure European designer, creating clothes for an outlandishly niche audience, could change the fit of the everyday American man’s pants, and to be sure, Slimane’s interpretation was channeling femme-curious 1960s rock stars. But with the debut of “Mad Men” in 2007, we came to understand that a closely tailored suit was not borrowing from the ladies, but a kind of machismo. And when, the following year, J. Crew debuted its Ludlow Suit — a $600ish ticket to looking cool and at home in the complicated and pricey world of men’s tailoring — the skinny fit officially, and quickly, became the standard millennial pant. (If you’ve attended a wedding in the past 15 years, a Ludlow Suit was probably also in attendance.)
Lorenzo’s suiting was not the first pivot away from the skinny fit, but it’s been the most potent. Fear of God’s tailoring, especially since Lorenzo collaborated with Italian giant Zegna in 2020, recalls the humble but expressive ease of Armani, and the oversize suiting (often in beige) favored by athletes in the 1990s.
He is the foremost Black designer in the world making clothes that could be described as quiet luxury — an irrepressible term embraced by designers and customers alike that is loaded with classist and even racist notions about taste and refinement, and that, in a certain light, exploded as a conservative reaction to the dominance of the streetwear movement that put the direction of fashion firmly in the hands of Black designers and consumers for the first time. Lorenzo’s suiting is a righteous challenge to that narrative: it is a Black designer’s concept of understated tailoring, a world dominated by white men. In other words, to wear a Lorenzo silhouette isn’t just to wear a fashion-forward look — it’s a badge of honor.
The odd thing is that Kelce knows better. He’s worn better pants before, including many wide ones. He has even worn a Fear of God suit in the correct proportions. And Kelce is a great example of the modern men’s dresser: he has fun with his clothes. He’s not afraid to look outrageous. He loves prints and matching sets. His sartorial joy is infectious. Unlike many top athletes, he does not work with a stylist — this is all him. All the more reason for him to go (literally) big on the pants: he can show guys that relaxed trousers look very, very good.
Over the past few years, football players, maybe the last holdouts in the merger between sports and designer clothes, have embraced some of the clotheshorse habits that basketball players have made into a second competition.
Perhaps Kelce felt that, in appearing at the White House — certainly one of the most high-profile events for which he is not in uniform — he needed to home in on American norms about pants. (You also wonder whether Kelce, who has a mischievous sense of humor, was trolling Barack Obama’s infamously panned beige suit.) And yet there is nothing normal about American men’s pants. In their quest to become fitted and hip, they have devolved from tailored and crisp to a second skin, almost like a fungus.
Rather than skim the body to lengthen the leg or simply provide comfort through looseness, men’s pants instead cling to the thighs and hips, focusing an ungainly amount of attention to the middle part of one’s body. (Combined with ever-shortening shirting, this has been a disaster for men’s lower backs. You are not imagining things: clothing is indeed shrinking.)
The chino, which remains the menswear office and wedding staple, is almost uniformly made with some kind of stretch material — which is to say that brands aren’t just allowing this to happen, but encouraging men to wear their pants this way. That stretch — 2 percent Lycra at the Gap, 3 percent Spandex at Brooks Brothers and one pair of Bonobos has a whopping 8 percent Lycra — makes the fabric softer. But at what cost? Don Draper wanted to look modern. You don’t look cool sipping whiskey in pants that look like they came from the Lululemon yoga section. I see men on the subway and feel for them, the way men have probably felt about women wearing high heels. Even worse, these synthetic fabric blends, which do not biodegrade, are bad for the environment.
Most designers have moved on from the fit they wrought: Mike Amiri, who made the skinny jeans beloved by rappers and Los Angeles creatives, is making wide-legged silhouettes. J. Crew’s menswear guru, Brendon Babenzien, introduced a wide-cut khaki, the “Giant Fit chino,” as well as a wider leg alternative to the Ludlow. (The Ludlow, when tailored correctly, which is to say not so tight that you look like a molting insect, still looks fantastic. As for jeans, there are no rules.)
Until men finally relent and wear pants that fit, we may have to look to the ladies. Late last week, Chicago Sky player Kysre Gondrezick arrived for her game in a black suit over an open white shirt and a bra. Her pants were cropped, but blousy, even bouncy. She looked like a winner.
