EDITOR’S NOTE: Featuring the good, the dangerous and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is an everyday collection devoted to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the final seven days.
Bad Bunny’s fashion has at all times defied expectations. So, amid intense hypothesis that he would use his Super Bowl outfit to subvert masculine stereotypes, stage a protest or publicly lambast ICE (once more), it was maybe no shock that he did exactly none of these issues.
This was a jubilant celebration of tradition and music, not a searing piece of social commentary. The Puerto Rican rapper teased as much at Apple Music’s halftime present press convention on Thursday, when he stated that “people only have to worry about dancing.” Bookmakers have been, nonetheless, taking bets on whether or not he’d put on a skirt, or perhaps a ballgown, till the second he took the stage.
In the finish, nevertheless, Bad Bunny merely did what he’s greatest at: being impeccably well-dressed. Anything extra flamboyant might need been an unwelcome distraction. The actual shock was that he turned to quick vogue retailer Zara for his outfits, quite than one in all the many luxurious labels for whom this may have represented a serious coup. Just final week he arrived at the Grammys sporting couture label Schiaparelli’s first foray into menswear.
Emerging to the 2022 hit “Tití Me Preguntó,” soccer in hand, he started the halftime present as he would finish it, in head-to-toe white. His collared shirt and necktie peeked out from beneath a customized fake soccer jersey that faintly bared his household title, Ocasio, and the quantity 64, which instantly sparked fan theories on what it’d symbolize. The legs of his spotless chinos rested completely atop a pair of his Adidas BadBo 1.0 sneakers (what greater stage to unveil the new collaboration’s cream colorway?).
Lady Gaga’s visitor interlude offered the excellent likelihood for a fancy dress change. But he as a substitute caught steadfastly to the theme, reappearing in a double-breasted cream blazer — a wardrobe change so delicate that many viewers could have missed it fully. Ricky Martin adopted go well with, albeit with considerably extra chest on show, in a loosely tailor-made all-white ensemble.
Known for combining excessive vogue with streetwear, Bad Bunny has a repute for adventurous and subversive fashion. He typically makes use of outfits to make a point, whether or not arriving at the Met Gala with a 26-foot-long floral prepare or sporting a skirt on “The Tonight Show” to attract consideration to the homicide of a homeless transgender girl. But the Super Bowl is a broad church, and this was, by design, a night on which garments didn’t do the speaking.
The main message right here was one in all love and unity, instructed by way of the rapper’s rallying cry of “God bless America,” which he adopted by shouting out the names of nations throughout the Americas. At the finish of the efficiency, he held out the identical soccer he’d arrived on stage with, the phrases “Together We Are America” stamped throughout it displaying.
The manufacturing wardrobe nonetheless discovered loads of methods to pay homage to Puerto Rico — a recurring theme of Bad Bunny’s vogue — with performers sporting the island’s conventional “pava” straw hats and the colours of the Puerto Rican flag. Lady Gaga, in the meantime, sported a blue flamenco gown adorned with a brooch modeled on Puerto Rico’s nationwide flower, the Flor de Maga.
And past vogue, the set was dripping with symbolism, from sugar canes evoking the island’s colonial previous to energy strains chatting with its unreliable infrastructure (the latter have been climbed by dancers throughout a rendition of “El Apagón,” or “The Power Outage”). Yet, the iconography was primarily one in all delight, not protest.
Fashion icons know when to make use of their very own backs to make a press release, and when to bow to the event. In that sense, Bad Bunny’s pared-back, minimalist method mirrored his imaginative and prescient for halftime: no prints, no patterns, no overt subtext — simply celebration.