Touchdown! Inside the GQ Bowl in New Orleans, Where Football Stars and Supermodels Went from the Bode Runway to the Dance Floor
StyleJa’Marr Chase, Lucky Blue Smith, Leon Bridges, CeeDee Lamb, SZA, Taylor Hill, and more brought a taste of fashion week to the Big Easy.By Samuel HinePhotography by Krista SchlueterFebruary 8, 2025Save this storySaveSave this storySaveNew Orleans, 30 minutes to kickoff. A couple of wide receivers were in the locker room, trying to overcome primetime jitters. “I’m pretty excited, but I was a bit nervous earlier,” remarked Bengals star Ja’Marr Chase, the NFL’s reigning leader in receiving yards. Nearby, CeeDee Lamb, who in August signed a record $136 million contract with the Cowboys, was running through the game in his head. “I’m a little anxious, a little nervous,” Lamb said. “You got a couple thoughts. But I got to ignore the other people around and focus on the main thing. It’s just a go route, out.”To be fair to these pro ballers who make their living catching one-handed TDs in front of millions of fiendish fans, it was a less familiar field of play under these Friday night lights: the Bode Rec. Spring 2025 fashion show at the GQ Bowl—presented by Samsung Galaxy, Lexus, and Glenmorangie—about to get underway at the historic Hotel Peter and Paul on the eve of Super Bowl weekend. And both pro ballers were about to make their runway debuts.Lucky Blue Smith and Alvin Kamara in the Bode Rec. Spring 2025 fashion show Nerves aside, Lamb looked right at home in a creamy silk dinner jacket as he palled around backstage with the likes of Lucky Blue Smith and Taylor Hill, bona-fide supermodels who know a thing or two about go routes down the catwalk. It wasn’t so long ago that football was still in the style Stone Age. But in recent years, a new generation of swaggy players have turned the pre-game tunnel walk into their own personal runway, embracing the growing prominence of high fashion in every corner of pop culture. And while fashion has its galas and football its fair share of jamborees, the GQ Bowl was conceived as a weekend-long celebration of football and fashion coming together, with Bode designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s first runway show in two years at the center of the action.The Hotel Peter and Paul covers most of a block in the quaint Marigny district, anchored by a majestic red brick cathedral built in 1861 that once housed an Irish-Catholic church. As a humid evening fell, the GQ Bowl green carpet sprung to life outside. Keeping with the wide receiver theme, the actor and comedian Benito Skinner greeted Giants legend Victor Cruz—one of the first NFL players to crossover into high fashion—with a flying chest bump worthy of a red zone triumph.CeeDee Lamb, Ray-Ray McCloud III, Emily Adams Bode Aujla, Aaron Aujla, and Ja'Marr Chase “It felt good to get back together, just two wide receivers shooting the shit,” Skinner joked of meeting Cruz on the carpet, where Cruz was co-hosting the GQ Bowl livestream alongside ESPN NFL analyst Mina Kimes. More theater kid than jock, Skinner nevertheless played high school ball in Idaho, material for his buzzy forthcoming A24-produced TV series Overcompensating, where he plays a closeted high school football star. (And where Charli XCX plays herself—another potential inflection point in the crossover between sports, style, and culture.) “It was nice to go back and relive it and be able to laugh at it now,” said Skinner, who wore a designer football jersey by ERL. “It was less traumatic this time around.”In a sign of just how serious the sport is taking its new relationship with the fashion world, as Skinner found his front row seat in the chapel he was intercepted by Kyle Smith, the NFL’s official fashion editor. They met recently on a flight back from Paris Fashion Week, and Smith wanted to discuss Skinner taking over the NFL Instagram account. “It’s about time!” Skinner declared.Of any American cultural spectacle, the Super Bowl attracts a particularly powerful cross section of movers and shakers. Under gleaming tin foil stars hanging from the ceiling like the decorations of a high school dance, sports business rainmaker Rich Kleiman caught up with restaurateur to the stars Mario Carbone. A few seats over, “Hot Mess” podcaster Alix Earle leaned over her boyfriend Braxton Berrios to chat with Dixie D’Amelio, who declared that her favorite part of New Orleans was its “witchiness.”But above all, Super Bowl weekend brings out NFL players licking their wounds from a long regular season and ready to party. Joe Burrow took his seat near a trio of larger-than-life maché champagne coupes covered in pomping flowers, as if a bubbly Mardi Gras float had landed in the apse of the cathedral. “Bode Rec. is about the history of American athletic wear, and for the show I was thinking about parade culture and the tradition of homecoming parades,” Emily Adams Bode Aujla told me before the show.Leon Bridges backstage before the Bode Rec. show Burrow exhaled and took a load off. Though the Bengals quarterback has been one of the most prominent NFL players on the fashion week circui
New Orleans, 30 minutes to kickoff. A couple of wide receivers were in the locker room, trying to overcome primetime jitters. “I’m pretty excited, but I was a bit nervous earlier,” remarked Bengals star Ja’Marr Chase, the NFL’s reigning leader in receiving yards. Nearby, CeeDee Lamb, who in August signed a record $136 million contract with the Cowboys, was running through the game in his head. “I’m a little anxious, a little nervous,” Lamb said. “You got a couple thoughts. But I got to ignore the other people around and focus on the main thing. It’s just a go route, out.”
To be fair to these pro ballers who make their living catching one-handed TDs in front of millions of fiendish fans, it was a less familiar field of play under these Friday night lights: the Bode Rec. Spring 2025 fashion show at the GQ Bowl—presented by Samsung Galaxy, Lexus, and Glenmorangie—about to get underway at the historic Hotel Peter and Paul on the eve of Super Bowl weekend. And both pro ballers were about to make their runway debuts.
Nerves aside, Lamb looked right at home in a creamy silk dinner jacket as he palled around backstage with the likes of Lucky Blue Smith and Taylor Hill, bona-fide supermodels who know a thing or two about go routes down the catwalk. It wasn’t so long ago that football was still in the style Stone Age. But in recent years, a new generation of swaggy players have turned the pre-game tunnel walk into their own personal runway, embracing the growing prominence of high fashion in every corner of pop culture. And while fashion has its galas and football its fair share of jamborees, the GQ Bowl was conceived as a weekend-long celebration of football and fashion coming together, with Bode designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s first runway show in two years at the center of the action.
The Hotel Peter and Paul covers most of a block in the quaint Marigny district, anchored by a majestic red brick cathedral built in 1861 that once housed an Irish-Catholic church. As a humid evening fell, the GQ Bowl green carpet sprung to life outside. Keeping with the wide receiver theme, the actor and comedian Benito Skinner greeted Giants legend Victor Cruz—one of the first NFL players to crossover into high fashion—with a flying chest bump worthy of a red zone triumph.
“It felt good to get back together, just two wide receivers shooting the shit,” Skinner joked of meeting Cruz on the carpet, where Cruz was co-hosting the GQ Bowl livestream alongside ESPN NFL analyst Mina Kimes. More theater kid than jock, Skinner nevertheless played high school ball in Idaho, material for his buzzy forthcoming A24-produced TV series Overcompensating, where he plays a closeted high school football star. (And where Charli XCX plays herself—another potential inflection point in the crossover between sports, style, and culture.) “It was nice to go back and relive it and be able to laugh at it now,” said Skinner, who wore a designer football jersey by ERL. “It was less traumatic this time around.”
In a sign of just how serious the sport is taking its new relationship with the fashion world, as Skinner found his front row seat in the chapel he was intercepted by Kyle Smith, the NFL’s official fashion editor. They met recently on a flight back from Paris Fashion Week, and Smith wanted to discuss Skinner taking over the NFL Instagram account. “It’s about time!” Skinner declared.
Of any American cultural spectacle, the Super Bowl attracts a particularly powerful cross section of movers and shakers. Under gleaming tin foil stars hanging from the ceiling like the decorations of a high school dance, sports business rainmaker Rich Kleiman caught up with restaurateur to the stars Mario Carbone. A few seats over, “Hot Mess” podcaster Alix Earle leaned over her boyfriend Braxton Berrios to chat with Dixie D’Amelio, who declared that her favorite part of New Orleans was its “witchiness.”
But above all, Super Bowl weekend brings out NFL players licking their wounds from a long regular season and ready to party. Joe Burrow took his seat near a trio of larger-than-life maché champagne coupes covered in pomping flowers, as if a bubbly Mardi Gras float had landed in the apse of the cathedral. “Bode Rec. is about the history of American athletic wear, and for the show I was thinking about parade culture and the tradition of homecoming parades,” Emily Adams Bode Aujla told me before the show.
Burrow exhaled and took a load off. Though the Bengals quarterback has been one of the most prominent NFL players on the fashion week circuit in recent years, not all the extracurriculars in the world can hide the fact that these guys are fiery competitors at their core. After Burrow’s Bengals narrowly missed the playoffs in January, Burrow was content, he told me, to be in the crowd at the show rather than under the spotlight. “I'm in a little different mindset after the season, where it's like I kind of just want to curl up into a ball and not be heard from for a couple months,” he told me. “I’m not quite in my confident mindset, I would say.” Still, Burrow couldn’t resist a little healthy ribbing with his favorite receiving target, who was just moments from making his modeling debut: “I’m definitely going to try to make Ja’Marr laugh when he walks down the runway.”
After the green carpet cleared, and all seats were filled, Cruz and Kimes announced to viewers watching the GQ Bowl livestream that it was finally game time. Leon Bridges appeared under a spotlight and strummed his guitar at the end of the runway. The crowd hushed as the notes of Bridges’ soul anthem “River” rose to the eaves. Burrow leaned forward and locked in on Bode Aujla’s pageant of varsity elegance. First up: out came the fashion-world pros, and on Lucky Blue Smith, Indiana Affleck, and Julez Smith, Bode Aujla’s delicately-detailed tailoring had an elegant shimmer, her exploration of American pageantry resonating powerfully with the setting, the city, and the occasion. Alongside her signature intricate formalwear was a seam of exquisitely stylish locker room-wear, which caught at least one player’s eye in the audience. (Launched last year to run alongside the nine-year-old brand’s more formal mainline, Bode Rec. encompasses “all the clothing that you might find in someone’s gym bag” from the golden age of American style, said Bode Aujla.) Evan Mock passed by in an amusing tiger print graphic tee emblazoned with the words “Beer Is Good.” “I need one of those,” Burrow declared.
After a co-ed march of male and female models, there was a shift in energy in the chapel when Saints running back Alvin Kamara hit the runway—a reminder that, yes, this was Super Bowl weekend, and, yes, there were surprises left in store. Burrow nodded as Kamara proudly powered down the runway, an antique American flag in the crook of his arm. Giants defensive lineman Kayvon Thibodeaux looked remarkably light on his opera-pump-clad feet in a floral-print silk smoking jacket over languid purple pajamas. “Yes!” whispered Burrow as Chase hit all of his marks, while proudly carrying the maché head of a–was it a Bengal?—under his arm. CeeDee Lamb was the final football player up. Out route. Go! Not even a momentary stumble could stop a sheepishly grinning Lamb from completing the play.
After the models and players took one last stroll down the runway together, Bridges escorted a beaming Bode Aujla out of the church in the finale to the kind of applause any NFL player might recognize after a resounding win. Next door to the chapel, in the courtyard of the Peter and Paul, the party continued in the kind of scene you can only capture at a fashion show on the edge of Super Bowl weekend in the Big Easy. At one end of the room, models were taking selfies with SZA. At the other, Offset was dapping up Pete Davidson, who made it clear who he was rooting for in an Eagles tee. In the middle of the action, Diplo grabbed a plate of jambalaya while Kamara celebrated with a sazerac. At the height of the party, when our late-night snack partner Raising Cane’s showed up—drawing hungry crowd to the curb—I heard a guest musing about where the relationship between fashion and football would go from here. “Okay,” they gushed about the Bode Rec. production. “Imagine if that was the halftime show?”
1/82Braxton Berrios and Alix Earle
2/82Victor Cruz and Benito Skinner
3/82Da’Vine Joy Randolph
4/82Victor Cruz and Mario Carbone
5/82SZA
6/82Alix Earle, Braxton Berrios, Dixie D'Amelio, and Joe Burrow
7/82Kordell Beckham
8/82Terrence O'Connor, Benito Skinner, and Heidi Smith
9/82Wisdom Kaye
10/82Rashod Bateman
11/82Inside the cathedral at the Hotel Peter and Paul
12/82Heidi Smith and GQ global editorial director Will Welch
13/82Ellie Thumman
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16/82Leon Bridges
17/82Taylor Hill
18/82Indiana Affleck
19/82Alvin Kamara
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21/82Kayvon Thibodeaux
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23/82Ja'Marr Chase
24/82Ray-Ray McCloud III
25/82Evan Mock
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27/82CeeDee Lamb
28/82Julez Smith
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33/82Taylor Hill
34/82Leon Bridges and Emily Adams Bode Aujla take their bow
35/82Leon Bridges and Emily Adams Bode Aujla
36/82Taylor Hill
37/82Da’Vine Joy Randolph
38/82Lucky Blue Smith
39/82SZA
40/82CeeDee Lamb and Taylor Rooks
41/82Indiana Affleck
42/82Alvin Kamara and Will Welch
43/82Joe Burrow
44/82Victor Cruz and Ray-Ray McCloud III
45/82Offset
46/82Sexyy Red and Will Welch
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48/82Ja'Marr Chase, Patrick Surtain II, Victor Cruz, and Kayvon Thibodeaux
49/82CeeDee Lamb and Patrick Surtain II
50/82GQ's Daniel Riley, Samuel Hine, and Zach Baron
51/82Aaron Aujla and Emily Adams Bode Aujla
52/82CeeDee Lamb with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
53/82Dex Robinson
54/82Will Welch, Offset, and Samuel Hine
55/82Emily Adams Bode Aujla, center
56/82Damar Hamlin and Will Welch
57/82The Lexus LC convertible
58/82Diplo
59/82Duke Riley
60/82Evan Mock and Atiba Jefferson
61/82Nigel Sylvester toasts GQ Bowl with Glenmorangie The Infinita 18 Years Old single malt whisky
62/82Pete Davidson and Offset
63/82Mina Kimes and Zach Baron
64/82Flavor Flav and Blu DeTiger
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67/82Ward Stegerhoek and Will Welch
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69/82DJ Kitty Ca$h
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74/82GQ's Frazier Tharpe and Jeremy Clowney
75/82Samuel Hine, Emily Adams Bode Aujla, and George Cortina
76/82GQ's Brauna Marks and Damar Hamlin
77/82Victor Cruz and Will Welch
78/82A late night snack courtesy of Raising Cane's
79/82
80/82Emily Adams Bode Aujla and Dr. Bruce Bode
81/82A late night snack courtesy of Raising Cane's
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