Ask the people who know me best, and they will say that outside my family and friends, my two deepest passions are style and sports. I actually used to dream of being one of the stat-nerds that agonizingly pored over numbers to develop player evaluation and projection systems.
But enough about the past few weeks…..knowing my two passions, one can imagine that if there are ever opportunities where these two worlds meet, I almost pass out with excitement.
Sports, frankly, does not get enough credit for certain fashion trends. Whether it is Michael Jordan introducing the baggier shorts and shaved head or the Michigan Fab Five donning the black socks in the early ’90s or MLB allowing baseball caps to be mass-produced, sports have set certain undeniable trends in motion that have either had their time come and go (black socks) or are still going strong (baseball caps).
Recently, I ran across a couple of things of interest that I thought might be intriguing to any fellow hardwood-haberdashery lovers out there.
Uni Watch
This isn’t really a new discovery by any means; I have been reading Paul Lukas for a long time. I first saw his semi-regular columns on ESPN discussing each upcoming sports season and the changes (good or bad) that had been made to each team’s uniforms.
That inevitably led me to his Uni Watch blog which is so chock-a-bock full of information, it will make your head spin. Anyone who writes about the “visual history of sports design” (as he calls it) and has categories for his posts that have to do with curling and rodeo certainly has my respect.
By far the most entertaining part of the blog is the regular appearance of the Uni Watch News Ticker which highlights all things old and new in the world of sports fashions, uniforms, logos, patches, color vs. color games, you name it…
And the tagline (“The Obsessive Study of Athletics Asthetics”) is priceless.
Update on NBA Dress Code
This short, but perceptive article appears in the latest issue of ESPN the magazine and is written by the Worldwide Leader’s Ric Bucher. While he certainly will never claim to be a style writer, Bucher (fairly level-headed and straightforward analyst) does a good job of contrasting the grumbling that was first heard when the NBA instituted its “business casual” code back in 2005 with the praise it is receiving today. While admittedly a bit of hyperbole, Bucher says that this dress code might have done more than anything to move away from the sweat-suit-wearing, large pendant necklace-hanging, Escalade-driving culture that was the NBA to more of a “Euro” style – where players are not mocked for wearing clothes that fir their body.
My favorite quote is from a 20-year-old Kevin Durant, who never was part of the NBA without a dress code, saying about guys who would have showed up wearing track suits or something similar: “That’s just not professional.”
Always happy to see somone notice that at such a young age.
