N.F.L. Style Will Never Beat N.B.A. Style

You want to see some real fashion ingenuity? Watch the N.F.L. draft.

I’m not saying it’s all good, but where else are you going to see someone in a double-breasted suit made by a company better known for making yoga pants? Or an Abercrombie & Fitch suit jacket so short that it exposes the belt loops on the pants beneath?

On the whole, the style on display at the N.F.L. draft last night was very overeager senior formal: a lot of suits in colors beyond basic blue. The quarterback Ty Simpson wore a custom suit by the athleisure label Alo, which, I have to say, looked better than I would have envisioned had you said the words “Alo Yoga suit” to me.

I thought it might have been from Suitsupply, but the conspicuous “Alo” pin on his right lapel put that idea to rest. Simpson, smartly, unfastened that beacon before appearing onstage as the 13th pick to the Los Angeles Rams. He had, perhaps, satisfied his contractual obligations by that point.

Earlier in the evening, as the wide receiver Carnell Tate threw up his arms in exaltation after being picked fourth by the Tennessee Titans, his cropped Abercrombie & Fitch jacket revealed a swatch of rib cage. He looked like a maitre d’ who had just hit the Mega Millions.

During the N.B.A.’s extended fashion awakening, its draft has become a sandbox for luxury brands to cozy up to would-be endorsers. The Frenchman Victor Wembanyama broke a kind of cashmere ceiling when he wore Louis Vuitton to go first overall in the 2023 N.B.A. draft.

The N.F.L. draft has none of that. The brands you see are often not brands at all, but custom tailors that reach the league’s neophytes through a whisper network among players. The draft is also a platform to raise the curtain on longer-term brand deals that better suit these rookies. We may, for instance, never see Simpson in a suit again. Nearly every photo from his time at Alabama shows him in a T-shirt or hoodie. It makes sense for him to sign with Alo.

Football is the most mainstream of American cultural entities. And it’s one that still hasn’t, in spite of the league’s best efforts, taken off overseas. Few players, save some quarterbacks and a tight end who happens to be engaged to a pop star, feel bigger than the game itself. If you’re a new-to-the-league linebacker, you’ll most likely never harness the star power to grab the attention of Armani, but you might have just the right pull for Abercrombie.

The N.F.L. draft is therefore one of the few red carpets where the brands worn by the athletes may also be worn by those watching at home. How many people watching the Oscars will ever own clothes from Louis Vuitton or Chanel? People may comment online about Lady Gaga wearing Matières Fécales to the Grammys, but how many of those fans and viewers could afford to buy clothes from it?

The Japanese designers changing fashion

Yesterday, I published a deep dive into how a newish crop of Japanese designers are soaking up all the attention in men’s fashion right now. This was a piece I was writing in my head long before I sat down and finally started typing. I remember sitting at a fashion show in Paris over a year ago — I believe it was Dior — and being asked by my seatmate if I’d made it over to a showroom in the Marais to check out A.Presse. That Tokyo-based brand is now part of a vanguard of Japanese labels that, on many days, seems to be all anyone in fashion wants to talk about. I spent months talking with designers, store owners and big-time shoppers to make sense of why these brands have kicked up so much buzz and, more than that, what makes their clothes so great. You can read the story here.

Other things worth knowing about:

Watching the (seemingly endless) “The Devil Wears Prada 2” press run has been like mainlining a half-decade of trend reports. Let’s see, the cast has worn opera gloves, Clintonian pantsuits, a strapless corset dress and clothes of lurid green. The best outfit, if you ask me, was worn by Meryl Streep: some basic black pants and a leopard Gucci shearling. Magisterial but easy. She looked as if she had picked up a rug from Miranda Priestly’s townhouse floor and plopped it over her shoulders.
If you know where Madonna’s Coachella outfit is, send her a DM.
Tom Steyer, a sudden front-runner in the California governor’s race, wore Air Force 1s onstage at a debate. Is he the only billionaire whose sneaker of choice isn’t from Zegna or Loro Piana?
Victoria Beckham and Gap have announced a “multiseason partnership,” the first part of which will be introduced today. Looks like a lot of denim and cotton tees. In other words: very Gap.
I felt some idea envy reading this story on how everything (well, nearly everything) in the “Devil Wears Prada” universe has become more expensive since the movie premiered 20 years ago.