EDITOR’S NOTE: Featuring the good, the unhealthy and the ugly, ‘Look of the Week’ is an everyday sequence devoted to unpacking the most talked about outfit of the final seven days.
Bad Bunny’s fashion has all the time 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 show press convention on Thursday, when he mentioned that “people only have to worry about dancing.” Bookmakers had 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 finest at: being impeccably well-dressed. Anything extra flamboyant may need been an unwelcome distraction.
The actual shock was that he turned to Zara for his outfits, fairly than certainly one of the many luxurious labels for whom this could have represented a significant coup. While it’s unclear whether or not Bad Bunny was sponsored by the Spanish quick trend retailer to put on its garments, or if the choice was organically made to nod to the singer-songwriter largely performing his songs in Spanish, high designers would absolutely have relished this chance. Just final week, couture label Schiaparelli even made its first foray into menswear in its 99-year historical past simply to dress him for the Grammys.
Emerging to the 2022 hit “Tití Me Preguntó,” soccer in hand, he started the halftime show 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 signify. The legs of his spotless chinos rested completely atop a pair of his Adidas BadBo 1.0 sneakers (what larger stage to unveil the new collaboration’s cream colorway?).
Lady Gaga’s visitor interlude introduced the excellent likelihood for a fancy dress change. But he as an alternative caught steadfastly to the theme, reappearing in a double-breasted cream blazer — a wardrobe change so refined that many viewers could have missed it solely. 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 trend with streetwear, Bad Bunny has a fame for adventurous and subversive fashion. He usually makes use of outfits to make a degree, whether or not arriving at the Met Gala with a 26-foot-long floral practice or carrying a skirt on “The Tonight Show” to attract consideration to the homicide of a homeless transgender lady. But the Super Bowl is a broad church, and this was, by design, a night on which garments didn’t do the speaking.
One quietly uttered message could have been about accessibility — and a reluctance to flaunt wealth at a time when many American households face rising prices. The Super Bowl stage has been a customized luxurious runway in recent times (a current exception being Kendrick Lamar’s dancers carrying Uniqlo T-shirts final time, although he wore designer labels Martine Rose and Celine). Zara, against this, is a model inside attain for a lot of viewers. Ignoring his 18-carat gold Audemars Piguet look ahead to only a second, Bad Bunny could have been presenting himself as an everyman amongst the farmers and domino gamers of his Puerto Rico-inspired manufacturing.
The overarching theme right here, although, was certainly one of love and unity, informed by 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 similar soccer he’d arrived on stage with, the phrases “Together We Are America” stamped throughout it.
The manufacturing wardrobe nonetheless discovered loads of methods to pay homage to Puerto Rico — a recurring theme of Bad Bunny’s trend — with performers carrying the island’s conventional “pava” straw hats and the colours of the Puerto Rican flag. Lady Gaga, in the meantime, sported a blue flamenco costume by Luar, adorned with a brooch modeled on Puerto Rico’s nationwide flower, the Flor de Maga.
And past trend, 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 had been climbed by dancers throughout a rendition of “El Apagón,” or “The Power Outage”). Yet, the iconography was primarily certainly one of pleasure, 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 strategy mirrored his imaginative and prescient for halftime: no prints, no patterns, no overt subtext — simply celebration.