THE JOURNAL
Mr Michael Jordan on “Late Night with David Letterman”, Chicago Theatre, 4 May 1989. Photograph by Mr Paul Natkin/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
“My parents told me not to mess with the axe… ‘You’re too young to be playing with the axe, it is a very dangerous instrument’… So I’m chopping little bits of pieces of wood and being hard-headed and accidentally missed the wood and I cut half of my big toe”. It’s May 1989 and Mr Michael Jordan is regaling late-night chat-show tsar, Mr David Letterman, with the story of how he hurt himself when he was five years old. The treatment, he went on to explain, was the dousing of his maimed digit with kerosene, administered by the local “doctor”. Ouch. Luckily, this mishap of youth didn’t thwart a prolific career spent on his feet. If it had, one of sport’s biggest hitters might never have been. As a six-time NBA champion and dual Olympic gold medallist with successful side hustles in baseball and golf, the Greatest Of All Time’s athletic prowess requires no embellishment – but his style acumen is as noteworthy as his sporting stripes. And like just like the man, the outfit he wore as he gracefully swanned into the studio to rapturous applause, had stage presence of its own.
The ensemble in question bears all the hallmarks of his signature “big cut”, slouchy swagger. He wears the billowy, Giorgio Armani-esque cobalt-blue blazer, capacious white T-shirt and wide-leg slacks with a self-assurance that only the truly sartorially confident can carry off. In the wake of revived 1990s style codes, it’s a look clairvoyantly redolent of recent offerings from Balenciaga, Fear of God, Acne Studios, Jacquemus and the late, great Mr Virgil Abloh at both Off-White and Louis Vuitton.
Mr Michael Jordan on “Late Night with David Letterman”, Chicago Theatre, 4 May 1989. Photograph by Mr Paul Natkin/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
Volume defined Jordan’s wardrobe – and not just through his suiting. His sweats (often worn beneath cocoon-like tailored overcoats) natty argyle golfing sweaters and tracksuits all came in souped-up dimensions. This particular look, although carefully engineered by Jordan, was serendipitous in origin – and arose from his obsession with tailoring. “I’m a suit guy. I have anywhere from 100 to 150,” confessed Jordan in an interview with GQ in the 1990s. Many of these custom suits were made by Chicago tailor, Mr Alfonso Burdi, who initially made a capacious template suit for Jordan with the intention of scaling it back in subsequent fittings. But the basketball star took to its exaggerated proportions – sans alteration – and ordered a dozen more on the spot. This proclivity for volume came from Jordan’s curiously warped perception of his build: “I’ve always been a petite-type person, well, skinny”, he claimed. It seems that, like the best of us, even the 6ft 6in deified slam-dunker is subject to the whims of body consciousness. For him, the supersized cuts and wide lapels acted as armour to disguise self-perceived flaws – his “skinny” frame and bowed legs.
When having a new suit made, he often chose women’s fabrics for their fluid drape – a strategy that prophesised today’s gender-neutral movement. He also propelled athleticwear into the realms of bona fide luxury, decades before the phrase “sportsluxe” was typeset into style columns.
At the time, his sartorial choices were often divisive. The single gold hoop earring and berets raised more than one eyebrow and Savile Row purists have often panned his against-the-grain, gargantuan tailoring blocks. But, for anyone that chooses to blaze a trail in the wardrobe department on their own terms, it’s not always going to be a smooth ride. Perhaps then, what we can really learn from Jordan is to wear our glad rags with conviction and confidence, regardless of the prescribed order. Because Michael Jordan has never been one to play entirely by the rules – and that doesn’t seem to have dented his prospects.