Travis Kelce Is Becoming Fashion’s New Favourite Athlete

Subscribe to The Kicks You Wear with Mike D. Sykes, a drill down on the red hot intersection between sports and fashion.

Good morning, friends! Welcome back to The Kicks You Wear. Thanks so much for reading today. I appreciate you giving me a bit of your time. I hope your weekend was fantastic. Mine was good — I ate an obscene amount of burgers this weekend. I’ll be eating salad for the next week to course correct.

Today’s newsletter tackles Travis Kelce’s new level of celebrity and the opportunity that might provide for the fashion brands working with him. It’s so crazy to me that he and Taylor Swift took over Madison Square Garden for a night to get married. I wonder if they had a cash bar.

Plus, Hugo Boss gets in on the World Cup action thanks to a quick, last-minute partnership with the US men’s national team. It’s not all controversy with American football!

Quick hits:

• You should absolutely read BoF’s Cat Chen on the challenges and opportunities that fashion’s Americana boom has presented brands with. Excellent reporting.
• Emotional connection means more to consumers these days than status. The BoF insights team has more here as part of our State of Fashion coverage.
• Here’s Shayeza Walid in The Frayed Edge on what France’s new anti-fast fashion law means for companies like Shein.

Let’s get to it.

Travis Kelce’s Moment

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding will go down in history as one of those “Do you remember” moments in the zeitgeist. To call it a big deal is an understatement. I mean, they took over Madison Square Garden for it. It doesn’t get much bigger than that.

The read: As someone who has been glued to Travis Kelce’s NFL career from its inception in 2014, it’s been pretty wild to watch him transition from being an NFL star, playing one of the most uninteresting positions, to an emerging pop culture idol.

Obviously, a lot of the credit there goes to Taylor Swift — as they say, a rising tide raises all ships, and she’s basically a tidal wave at this point in her career. But still, no matter how it happened, Kelce’s name now carries a weight that very few other athletes have managed to achieve.

The question for us is whether fashion can capitalise on this, given that Kelce has become a low-key player in the industry..

• Kelce has long been one of Amiri’s athletic collaborators. He’s also been seen in brands like Thom Browne and Tom Ford.
• He isn’t just interested in being snapped wearing luxury products. He’s released actual products recently in collaboration with mass brands like Tommy Hilfiger and American Eagle as they’ve pushed deeper into sports. Hilfiger went so far as to name him a creative collaborator, with Hilfiger himself calling Kelce “one of the most magnetic figures in sport and culture today.”
• He also has his own lifestyle brand called Tru Kolors, which actually anchored his collaboration with American Eagle.

The intrigue: Many of those deals and moments are recent. He wore Amiri to the Super Bowl in 2025, and his collab with American Eagle began that same year. His work with Tommy Hilfiger also began in 2026. He isn’t a well-established fashion influencer with a long track record of moving the needle for brands.

But Kelce’s star has never been as big as in this moment. Considering that, it’s reasonable to think that more brands will want to be part of his orbit — especially those in luxury that are constantly looking for more places to find new audiences.

Between the lines: It’s already begun with the wedding, where he and Swift wore Dior haute couture by Jonathan Anderson and sported custom Christian Louboutin shoes. The public is still waiting on even the blurriest of photos of the ceremony to hit the internet, and yet it’s one of the buzziest topics of conversation you’ll find.

Be smart: This isn’t necessarily a repeatable moment. It’s not every day that you get married to one of the biggest stars in the world in Madison Square Garden. That’s once in a lifetime, folks.

But the spotlight on Kelce keeps growing brighter, even as his NFL career looks to be winding down Brands are sure to find opportunities to capitalise as his profile grows beyond the football field.

The World Cup Isn’t Only a Win for Sportswear

The US men’s national team may have lost (in an incredibly embarrassing fashion) to Belgium on Monday, ending its World Cup run. But Hugo Boss still managed to score a huge win in the tournament thanks to the team’s run.

The latest win: The plain blue overshirt that USMNT head coach Mauricio Pochettino has been wearing throughout the tournament is the newest hit for Hugo Boss.

• The company told Front Office Sports that the shirt sold out of hundreds of units within days of the team’s first World Cup appearance.
• Even after a restock, the $499 shirt still has only a few smaller sizes left available on Hugo Boss’ web store.

The timing might be the most fascinating part of this situation. This isn’t some longstanding relationship. Hugo Boss only just became the official businesswear attire partner for the USMNT weeks before the World Cup began. Weeks later, the partnership is already bearing fruit.

Why this matters: Most of the fashion discussion around this World Cup has rightfully been centred around the battle between sportswear’s giants, Nike and Adidas. Adidas is the main sponsor of the competition, while Nike is doing just about everything in its power to steer the cultural conversation around it.

While that battle was always going to take up the oxygen in the room, Hugo Boss’ win here shows just how much space there is for brands in other sectors to sneak in and grab some of the attention. Hugo Boss made it just in time and is now reaping the benefits.

The other side: Sports marketing is a bit of a double-edged sword. Hugo Boss scored a big win here by attaching itself to this team, but its run was cut short on Tuesday and the most memorable thing Pochettino did in the game was kick a Powerade in frustration.

You’ve got to take the good with the bad in these moments, and I’m sure Boss is thrilled with how this run went. But remember, you never know what the outcome of the game will be.

Naomi Osaka Does it Again

Naomi Osaka’s outfit was as good as her play on Sunday when she notched a big win against world number one Aryna Sabalenka to advance to Wimbledon’s quarterfinals for the first time in her career. She wore a custom white Nike kit layered with a kimono-inspired coat.

• The coat was designed by Japanese designer Hana Yagi, who called it a contemporary interpretation of a classic kimono.
• The piece was crafted from vintage upcycled bridal kimonos.

Take a look: Osaka posted a photo of the coat on Instagram, giving us a full look at just how much detail went into this concept. It looks fantastic.

The big picture: There’s not an athlete in sports who is having as much fun with fashion as Osaka is these days. Every time she makes an appearance on court, she’s pulling out some of the most eye-popping looks we’ve ever seen in tennis. She isn’t just showing up wearing certain brands — she’s bringing full concepts to the table and turning fashion into art.

What a breath of fresh air. Lets hope she makes it beyond the quarterfinal so she can keep getting these fits off.

What’s Droppin’, Bruh?

This is a dedicated section detailing upcoming sneaker releases for the week, and sometimes other interesting drops I think you might care about.

• Nike Air Max 95 SB “Club 58” — Tuesday, July 7
• New Balance 204V — Wednesday, July 8
• New Balance 992 “Chocolate City Pack” — Friday, July 10
• SOULGOODS x Nike Homescape Woven — Saturday, July 11
• Nike Air Force 1 Low “Philly” — Saturday, July 11

Thanks for reading, gang!

If you have any questions, comments or concerns, reach out to me via email at michael.sykes@businessoffashion.com or shoot me a message @MikeDSykes via socials.

Peace and love. Be safe, be easy, be kind. We out.

-Sykes 💯