Travis Kelce Plucked His ’70s Super Bowl Suit Straight Off the Runway
Style"He can make anything kind of work," designer Mike Amiri tells GQ of the Kansas City Chiefs star's lounge lizard two-piece.By Samuel HineFebruary 9, 2025Chris Graythen/Getty ImagesSave this storySaveSave this storySaveOne year ago, the designer Mike Amiri won the fashion world equivalent of a championship ring when Travis Kelce made his highly photographed stroll to the locker room at Super Bowl LVIII wearing a black bouclé Amiri set. Now, in the spirit of Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs, Amiri has scored a back-to-back win. On Super Bowl Sunday in New Orleans, Kelce pulled up to the Superdome wearing custom Amiri once again.On a phone call on Friday morning, a note of disbelief lingered in Amiri’s voice. In the highly competitive field of red carpet and celebrity dressing, few figures are more visible than the Kansas City tight end, boyfriend of Taylor Swift, and ubiquitous straddler of contemporary monoculture. And no fashion or awards show comes even close to the scale of the Super Bowl, which draws well over 100 million viewers. “It was pretty iconic,” said the designer of last year’s tunnel walk—one that set up an even more prominent moment later in the night. Following his team’s overtime win in Vegas, Kelce threw his jacket over Swift’s shoulders as they celebrated in a nightclub, an indelible image that ricocheted around the internet. As Amiri put it: “The guy just won the Super Bowl and walks out with the prom queen wearing his jacket.” Afterward, Kelce gave Amiri his flowers, telling his brother Jason Kelce on a podcast that the LA-based designer was “one of the best out there right now.”If last year’s outfit went viral thanks to extraordinary circumstances, this year’s is practically designed to confront a wall of flashbulbs. In a fitting in New Orleans on Saturday morning, Kelce selected a look from the collection Amiri showed last month at Paris Fashion Week, a bold, burnt orange, double-breasted suit fit for a ’70s Hollywood lounge lizard, complete with a matching disco fever-esque sequin undershirt. Kelce wasn’t available for comment, but a message from his camp described the look as an homage to New Orleans jazz, with the requisite reddish shade of the Chiefs.Interestingly, the suit originally went down the Amiri runway as a women’s outfit, but Amiri said he had no doubt it would work on the 6-foot-5 footballer: “He's just such a great person to dress because he can wear clothes, clothes don't wear him. He can make anything kind of work.”The slick retro look speaks to Kelce’s penchant for flair and his status as a bona fide menswear nerd in a king-of-the-jocks package. The footballer famously doesn’t employ a stylist on his payroll, which has allowed him to become one of the most dynamic celebrity dressers of our time, wearing Bottega Veneta one day and Collina Strada the next, elevating luxe casual-wear with a modest sense of eccentricity. If Victor Cruz paved the inroads for NFL players in the luxury fashion world, Kelce is now helping take things to the next level, following his self-driven curiosity wherever it goes and setting widespread trends along the way. (According to Amiri, sales of the blouson silhouette Kelce wore in Vegas last year spiked. “He moves the needle,” he said.)“He's really interested in fashion. He knows his brands, he has a perspective,” confirmed Amiri, who first met Kelce in Las Vegas two years ago, which launched what he called an “organic” friendship. According to Amiri, this latest look was arranged with all of two text messages to Kelce’s team. “They said he loves this, in all capitals,” Amiri says with a laugh. Kelce has bragged about deciding what to wear to games on Sunday morning, but he’s also well aware of how to make a statement with his clothes when all eyes are on him, a skill that he flexes just about every time he steps out with Swift. (For a pre-Super Bowl date night in New Orleans, he wore a gray cashmere Dior Homme blouson embroidered with the phrase “Dior For My Real Friends”—interpret that how you will!)In the hours before his Chiefs take on the Eagles on the biggest stage in sports, Kelce will no doubt be feeling the pressure. Mild sense of awe aside, Mike Amiri on the other hand wasn’t sweating one bit. “There’s the reality that you’re dressing one of the most visible men on the planet,” he said, “but at the same time I kind of just always think I'm dressing a friend. I want this guy to feel great. I want him to look good.”But wasn’t he also crossing his fingers that Kelce would lend the jacket to his date again at the end of a long, celebratory night? Amiri laughed. “That would be great. Let’s see if we can bring them the same luck.”
One year ago, the designer Mike Amiri won the fashion world equivalent of a championship ring when Travis Kelce made his highly photographed stroll to the locker room at Super Bowl LVIII wearing a black bouclé Amiri set. Now, in the spirit of Kelce’s Kansas City Chiefs, Amiri has scored a back-to-back win. On Super Bowl Sunday in New Orleans, Kelce pulled up to the Superdome wearing custom Amiri once again.
On a phone call on Friday morning, a note of disbelief lingered in Amiri’s voice. In the highly competitive field of red carpet and celebrity dressing, few figures are more visible than the Kansas City tight end, boyfriend of Taylor Swift, and ubiquitous straddler of contemporary monoculture. And no fashion or awards show comes even close to the scale of the Super Bowl, which draws well over 100 million viewers. “It was pretty iconic,” said the designer of last year’s tunnel walk—one that set up an even more prominent moment later in the night. Following his team’s overtime win in Vegas, Kelce threw his jacket over Swift’s shoulders as they celebrated in a nightclub, an indelible image that ricocheted around the internet. As Amiri put it: “The guy just won the Super Bowl and walks out with the prom queen wearing his jacket.” Afterward, Kelce gave Amiri his flowers, telling his brother Jason Kelce on a podcast that the LA-based designer was “one of the best out there right now.”
If last year’s outfit went viral thanks to extraordinary circumstances, this year’s is practically designed to confront a wall of flashbulbs. In a fitting in New Orleans on Saturday morning, Kelce selected a look from the collection Amiri showed last month at Paris Fashion Week, a bold, burnt orange, double-breasted suit fit for a ’70s Hollywood lounge lizard, complete with a matching disco fever-esque sequin undershirt. Kelce wasn’t available for comment, but a message from his camp described the look as an homage to New Orleans jazz, with the requisite reddish shade of the Chiefs.
Interestingly, the suit originally went down the Amiri runway as a women’s outfit, but Amiri said he had no doubt it would work on the 6-foot-5 footballer: “He's just such a great person to dress because he can wear clothes, clothes don't wear him. He can make anything kind of work.”
The slick retro look speaks to Kelce’s penchant for flair and his status as a bona fide menswear nerd in a king-of-the-jocks package. The footballer famously doesn’t employ a stylist on his payroll, which has allowed him to become one of the most dynamic celebrity dressers of our time, wearing Bottega Veneta one day and Collina Strada the next, elevating luxe casual-wear with a modest sense of eccentricity. If Victor Cruz paved the inroads for NFL players in the luxury fashion world, Kelce is now helping take things to the next level, following his self-driven curiosity wherever it goes and setting widespread trends along the way. (According to Amiri, sales of the blouson silhouette Kelce wore in Vegas last year spiked. “He moves the needle,” he said.)
“He's really interested in fashion. He knows his brands, he has a perspective,” confirmed Amiri, who first met Kelce in Las Vegas two years ago, which launched what he called an “organic” friendship. According to Amiri, this latest look was arranged with all of two text messages to Kelce’s team. “They said he loves this, in all capitals,” Amiri says with a laugh. Kelce has bragged about deciding what to wear to games on Sunday morning, but he’s also well aware of how to make a statement with his clothes when all eyes are on him, a skill that he flexes just about every time he steps out with Swift. (For a pre-Super Bowl date night in New Orleans, he wore a gray cashmere Dior Homme blouson embroidered with the phrase “Dior For My Real Friends”—interpret that how you will!)
In the hours before his Chiefs take on the Eagles on the biggest stage in sports, Kelce will no doubt be feeling the pressure. Mild sense of awe aside, Mike Amiri on the other hand wasn’t sweating one bit. “There’s the reality that you’re dressing one of the most visible men on the planet,” he said, “but at the same time I kind of just always think I'm dressing a friend. I want this guy to feel great. I want him to look good.”
But wasn’t he also crossing his fingers that Kelce would lend the jacket to his date again at the end of a long, celebratory night? Amiri laughed. “That would be great. Let’s see if we can bring them the same luck.”
