From LeBron James on 2003 NBA draft night to David Beckham and Lewis Hamilton, how athletes’ fashion influence evolved with social media
- We’re used to seeing athletes on social media dressed in high fashion or leisurewear, but it wasn’t always that way
- The 2003 NBA draft was famous for terrible, ill-fitting suits but these days athletes are likely to be fronting luxury brands, if not collaborating with them
The 2003 National Basketball Association (NBA) draft is widely considered to have had the most talented collection of college and high-school players ever to enter the world’s top professional basketball league. Four future hall-of-fame players were selected in the top five picks that night: Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and the No 1 pick, LeBron James, the 18-year-old phenomenon from Akron, Ohio.
At the end of the evening, as the NBA does with every draft class, a group photo was taken, and that snap captured a moment in sporting history that has also become notorious in fashion history. Despite the immense height and size of James, Wade and company, the striking thing was how baggy and ill-fitting their suits were.
The six-foot-11 (2.1 metre) Bosh wore a taupe suit with a lab coat for a jacket. Wade chose to go conservative with a navy suit that still appeared far too big and which he later admitted made him look like a preacher. Anthony’s grey suit had a collar with no lapels and six jacket buttons reaching nearly to the knot of his tie. And James, the man who continues to dominate the NBA to this day, wore an all-white, all-baggy number to denote his messiah status.
As much as the 2003 draft class is revered for its talent and success on the court, it is routinely roasted for its sartorial choices on the night. “We got enough fabric on these suits to clothe the entire country,” said Wade last year. “It’s funny when I look back at it and I thought I was, like, doing the right thing.”
Fast-forward to the first game of the 2018 NBA Finals. On his walk to the locker rooms, James stole the headlines again in both the sports and fashion press. The NBA’s most famous player sported an US$87,000 outfit: a custom-made Thom Browne suit with shorts instead of trousers, Thom Browne leather wingtip boots and alligator-skin bag, Jacques Marie Mage sunglasses and an Audemars Piguet watch.
