Super Fly: Inside NBA basketball’s enduring influence on fashion – from the ever-slick Kobe Bryant and bling-loving LeBron James, to Michael Jordan’s iconic oversized 90s suits

Sep 7 , 2023

As well as a top NBA player, Earvin “Magic” Johnson is considered a style icon, pictured here with typical swagger arriving for the Los Angeles Lakers’ game at the 1988 NBA All-Star Game. Photo: Getty

Michael Jordan’s big brand collabs were followed by Allen Iverson’s jaunty hip-hop aesthetic, and NBA players have long held a strong sway over trends – but the best-dressed sportsmen are not always MVPs

Mitchell S. Jackson’s new book Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion goes beyond the labels and glitz to examine at the socioeconomic factors shaping what we all wear

When Mitchell S. Jackson was offered the opportunity to put together a book about the intersection of fashion and basketball – subjects he has long harboured a fascination for – he thought the assignment would be “a no-brainer”.

“I thought it was going to be a short project,” says the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and acclaimed author. “It was meant to be 15,000 words. How long could that take? A few months?”

Instead, Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion, ended up taking a few years to complete, involving a substantial amount of research into subjects that went far past how NBA stars look on and off the court.

LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers pictured looking slick before a game earlier this year, against Oklahoma City Thunder in February. Photo: Getty Images

“As a basketball fan, I had some idea who the stars of the NBA were, going back to its inception,” says Jackson, who serves as the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the English department of Arizona State University. “But there is a difference between an NBA star and the NBA star that is also fashionable. And this book is a great representation of where NBA players have ascended, and how the most fashionable and best stars in basketball have as much influence in the fashion world as anyone else.”

There were some obvious contenders, and you’ll find lavishly detailed photos of them in the book: the late Kobe Bryant in a slender charcoal suit and skinny tie; a more ostentatious LeBron James in a pearlised black suit, with Van Cleef & Arpels Alhambra bracelets on his wrist and a hefty stone-encrusted gold piece around his neck; a young Magic Johnson in a voluminous fur coat.

The definition of style icon? Kobe Bryant for US magazine GQ in 2009. Photo: Handout

Jackson segmented the book into eras. The NBA came into being in 1949, when most of the league’s players were white and mostly wore suits and skinny ties. After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, basketball players got flashier and funkier, inspired by the rise of R&B music, turning heads in fur coats and large hats. Through the 1980s and 90s, Michael Jordan inspired a trend in oversized suits, before Allen Iverson’s jaunty hip-hop aesthetic that took us into the early 2000s.

Fashion is always shaped by larger forces. Whatever the rules and restrictions of the times are, the mores – ultimately that’s what decides what is and isn’t acceptable

It proved a challenge to source a lot of earlier photos, says Jackson, especially of star players off the court – unlike in today’s everything-is-for-public consumption arena, where every MVP’s fashion choice is scrutinised, challenged, acclaimed and imitated.