THE JOURNAL
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In a world where Real Madrid and England star Jude Bellingham appears in adverts for Kim Kardashian’s Skims and NBA player Jordan Clarkson is a regular at fashion shows for brands including Thom Browne, sportsmen are firmly on the style radar. But, in the past 10 years, it’s not these orchestrated occasions that have ruled supreme. Instead, it’s the seemingly candid moments before a game, or, more recently, on the way to a training session. Enter the tunnel fit.
Named in honour of the tunnel that basketball players walk through from their team bus to the locker room, this brief juncture has become a place to really let rip when it comes to fashion. At the height of NBA tunnel fit fever around 2021, players such as James Harden, Kyle Kuzma and Russell Westbrook were wowing fashion-literate sports fans, wearing labels including Marni, Rick Owens and Acne Studios.
Fast forward to 2025 and the hype has changed. In fact, Kuzma even denounced this culture, commenting to Vogue, “I don’t want to be a part of that type of community where you have to put on a fit. I’m really taking a backseat to all of that.” Instead, the star says this season he was reverting to that most anonymous of items – the grey tracksuit.
Even without Kuzma’s cosign, though, the tunnel fit is flourishing. Ian Pierno is an essential part of the story. In 2018, he founded the LeagueFits Instagram page as a place to celebrate the outfits worn by basketball players. “The concept was fire fits only,” he says. “At the time, we saw how much sneakers were covered, but it was like, ‘Why is nobody covering these outfits?’”
The account now has a million followers and Pierno and his team produce work across other channels as well. “LeagueFits is doing better than it ever has,” Pierno says. “More guys are dressing up than ever.”
This can be seen in the way the idea has spread to other sports. There’s American football, with players like Grant Delpit and, of course, Travis Kelce, and – most obviously – soccer. Tunnel-fit style is so popular in football that Barcelona manager Hansi Flick banned it last year, to avoid what he sees as a distraction, particularly for the extremely fashionable Jules Koundé (the right back swiftly switched to post-game fits).
If basketball has the tunnel, soccer’s style focus is the training ground. Videos shared on social media showcase players arriving in their own clothes. While some stick to the formula of expensive anonymous athleisure, others have surprising flair. Hypebeast recently spotlighted the style of league disruptors Nottingham Forest. Morgan Gibbs-White and Anthony Elanga are ones to watch with wardrobes that features AMI PARIS, LOEWE and AMIRI.
Meanwhile, the French national team turning up for training – Koundé, but also Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola – has become such a moment in the fashion and football interface that it has its own name “the Clairefontaine walk”, named after the location of their training ground.
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Tayler Willson, the editor of sports and fashion magazine CircleZeroEight, doesn’t think there’s a direct influence of tunnel fit culture at play, but he does acknowledge that the training-ground moment has become more high profile in the Premier League. “It’s now common to see players embrace bold and experimental looks similar to those seen in the NBA,” he says. “This style shift showcases a more expressive, personality-driven approach to menswear that we haven’t seen since the days of Pelé and George Best.”
The tunnel fit’s evolution might seem to be exclusively focused on fashion, but it was initially part of a pushback against a dress code put in place by the NBA in 2005, after the so-called Malice at the Palace, a fight after a game between the Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons with players and fans involved. In response, the then-NBA Commissioner David Stern introduced a ban on “baggy shorts, T-shirts, jerseys, trainers, flip-flops and do-rags,” as well as any “chains, pendants and medallions worn outside clothes”.
“It was a very racially coded dress code designed to ‘clean up’ the image of the league as a hip-hop league,” says the sports and culture journalist Daniel-Yaw Miller. “In the 2010s, players and their stylists started deliberately breaking that down. They were like, ‘We should be able to express our personalities.’” The dress code was eased from 2014 onward, ushering in the birth of the tunnel fit, and entirely rescinded from 2020.
Kuzma’s complaint is down to the fact that, 10 years on, the original concept is being coopted, with brands getting involved and genuine personal style lacking. Miller agrees that this is a new development – with players far more cognisant that this is a way to showcase their style and gain potential deals. “Speaking to stylists, especially in the basketball world, they say how aware players are about [how what they wear] in the tunnel communicates to the world about their image,” he says.
Willson says this is mirrored in the Premier League. “Nowadays, players are almost as focused on creating a personal brand off the pitch as they are enhancing their on-pitch career,” he says. Although this isn’t necessarily just about commercial deals: “We could see players embracing more emerging designers and perhaps more sustainable brands or labels with a message, to reflect individuality and align with certain values or personal brand.”
Whatever the motivation, sportsmen in directional fashion can’t be bad when it comes to formative style influences for the young men watching them. Pierno says fans pick up style tips. “In our Discord, we have a fit-check section where people can send their outfits in,” he says. “These people are just regular fans – and they’re dressing like NBA players.”
Miller even argues that this element of modern sports culture has brought a different group of people in. “I think you see more fans coming to the sport who don’t necessarily mind as much about the on-pitch stuff,” he says. “They’re coming from a style space.”
Sports stars as style stars first, athletes second – maybe that’s the power of the tunnel fit in 2025.