A horror film villain showed up inside the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. An upscale Jason Voorhees showed out to stalk the opposition hours before the New York Giants faced the division rival Washington Redskins for a late-October game in a custom, all-over print Fendi mask, complete with matching bucket hat, jacket, and shirt. While Halloween was the occasion, Odell Beckham, Jr., the great receiver, scarcely noticed because it was just another Sunday.
The NFL’s highest-paid wide receiver hasn’t let the limelight dim since making an incredible one-handed catch late in his rookie season. Off the pitch, he routinely sports his signature bleached hair, hanging earrings, and the hottest menswear pieces. The 26-year-old Beckham, often known as OBJ, is the NFL’s leading representative of millennial culture in a league that still leans older and more conservative. His audacity and sincerity breathe new life into the frequently stuffy sport.
“Football’s view of the collective tends to follow the military model of top-down deference to coach and, especially, owner,” wrote Mark Leibovich in “Big Game,” a scathing examination of the league.
“Compared to owners of other sports, NFL owners frequently feel the need to brag about their position at the top of the sports hierarchy. For whatever reason, they feel the need to emphasize the Tex Schramm mentality that “you guys are cattle, and we’re the ranchers.”
The NFL is rife with exceptional athletes, but Beckham has distinguished himself by not just emerging as one of the league’s top players but also one of the most recognizable figures in sports—a rarity for non-quarterbacks. Due to Beckham’s unyielding personality, everything he does, from clothing to speaking to the media, is as remarkable as his spectacular performances on the field.
Because of his bravado, he is a frequent target of criticism and belongs to a select group of NFL players who can genuinely sell shoes.
With the ideal balance of talent and charisma needed to sell sneakers, the NBA talent pool is always being replenished. In football, breaking the same ground is far more difficult. Only 17 NFL players have received their own pair of shoes in the last 30 years.
Beckham joined the likes of Randy Moss, Bo Jackson, Deion Sanders, and Deion Sanders with the Nike SF AF-1 Mid “OBJ,” a tactical take on the Air Force 1 in a NYC cab colorway. A distinctive pair of basketball shoes is a symbol of success in the sport. It demonstrates that you have grown beyond football.
“Being popular in the NFL is such a difficult proposition,” GQ style features writer Cam Wolf said in a phone interview. “Walking down the street, he would not be able to get past crowds of people like Deandre Hopkins and Antonio Brown, who are both big fashion guys but are much more anonymous. You have to be a much more diehard fan to know what their faces look like.”
The NBA tunnel has become another runway as basketball players, from real stars to role players, compete each night for the most memorable costume. NFL players only have one game per week and one normal day to make a big fashion statement. Beckham is the lone player making the most of the chance. Cam Newton is also a risk-taker, but his taste is terribly off. Although Tom Brady is the center of attention, his understated, traditional manner deflects rather than attracts attention.
Beckham isn’t stylish in the sense of putting together disparate pieces into a cohesive, aesthetically pleasing outfit. Victor Cruz, Beckham’s former teammate and predecessor as the NFL’s style king, was much better at that. The crown’s new bearer simply knows what he likes and can afford to max out his indulgences.
Fashion today is centered on highly covetable pieces, and Beckham is aspirational style incarnate, stacking the most Instagrammable items – often all from the same collection – on top of each other. He still has room to grow but being “in the know” makes him a hot commodity.
“There’s a passion there that makes getting dressed come naturally for him,” Wolf said. “I don’t think it’s forced. He’s always dressed sort of wackily.”
Earlier in October, Beckham showed up to a game wearing a black Off-White x Nike jacket with black pants and black sneakers from the same collaboration. Was it a difficult outfit to put together? No, but it was classic Beckham. Fashion at its worst is too self-conscious and shallow; at its best, it’s about having fun and representing who you are.
“You see him, and you see a young man,” Jordan Page, the vintage archivist, stylist and brand strategist the @veryadvanced Instagram account, said over the phone. “If he weren’t in the NFL, that’s what he’d be doing. He’d probably be an Instagram influencer doing the same exact thing.”
While Beckham is a trailblazer for the NFL, his style choices also reflect the recent acceptance of streetwear in the fashion world. Since at least the 1980s, when Dapper Dan equipped a generation of gangsters, rappers, and athletes by adding high fashion trademarks on bespoke items that were more suited for the streets, the demand has been strong. Early in the 1990s, his Harlem shop was shut down after the companies whose logos he had stolen without permission became aware of it. Fast-forward to 2017, when Gucci was exposed for copying one of his knockoff designs. This sparked an official partnership and the Italian house’s support for his own atelier.
Louis Vuitton had its own key collaboration last year, linking with Supreme, another brand that once found itself in hot water for riffing on the company’s iconic monogram. Unattainable for the masses at Louis Vuitton’s price point, the collection targeted the likes of Beckham as its demographic. He posed with his Lamborghini in both the hoodie and jeans (the latter of which he cut off himself) and wore the box logo tee under a custom blazer at the 2017 ESPY Awards. He even donned a custom Supreme x Louis Vuitton walking boot as he nursed a fractured ankle.
Hyped luxury pieces are now the norm, as shown by Louis Vuitton appointing Virgil Abloh – Off-White founder, Kanye West confidante and ultimate translator for the youth – as men’s artistic director. His debut collection hit stores in January and puts streetwear staples like hoodies, graphic tees and sneakers alongside more typical menswear fare. It’s only a matter of time before you see Beckham clad in one, if not many, of the pieces.
“This hypebeast thing is only recent,” Page said. “But as far as people who are flashy and wanted to be seen, (Beckham is) part of that cult. Joe Namath and Terry Bradshaw wore fur coats on the sideline, talked slick and had a personality beyond football that was very contagious.”
As far as American professional sports leagues go, the NFL still dominates in terms of revenue and viewership, but its forecast is spiraling. The league needs to empower more of its strong personalities, or it’s only a matter of time before the upwardly growing NBA overtakes it. As far as the zeitgeist is concerned, that shift has already been made.