The Super Bowl Halftime Show Was Kind of Incredibly Stylish

Super Bowl LIII was righteously grim, a series of three-and-outs that somehow, obviously, ended in a New England Patriots victory. (Our party ruled.) It was a tough capper to a year that felt more uninhibited, more stylish, than usual, thanks largely to Patrick Mahomes. But if the game let us down aesthetically, the halftime show somehow made up the difference. I’m not saying it was good, necessarily, though “Harder to Breathe” still goes. What I am saying is that the Super Bowl halftime show was bizarrely, impressively stylish.

Headliners Maroon 5 generally follow the T-shirt-and-skinny jeans route. On Sunday, they swerved slightly more high fashion. The guy with the hair, the one who isn’t Adam Levine, wore a suit, which was nice. And then Levine himself, when not shirtless and teasing Supreme boxers, pigeon-toed his way around the stage in Jordans and a Dries Van Noten jacket. Is rock dead? Maybe! But at least it’s got a good personal shopper at Barneys. Things got sleazier from there: as menswear observer Mordechai Rubenstein noted, Levine’s DSquared2 tank top—similar styles go for $300 a pop—wound up in the crowd. Make your own metaphor there.

The supporting acts didn’t disappoint, either—and articulated different ways menswear might lead us. Atlanta kingpin Big Boi rolled onto the field in a Cadillac—and a massive fur coat. It was cold in the A this week, I’m told—but this was more about looking regal than keeping warm, and it worked. Onstage, Big Boi, Sleepy Brown, and Levine showed off satin-y baseball jackets. “ATLIENS” looped in cursive script across the front, flipping the old-school Braves logo with a dose of hometown pride. The design was pure Outkast: swagged out and stiff-lip preppy in equal measure. (They’re available now on Outkast’s website.)

If Big Boi’s biggest-stage style was farm-to-table, focusing on pride and place, Travis Scott’s onstage getup nodded to the internet-driven, globe-spanning reach of modern streetwear. Scott, who gives ASAP Rocky a run as hip hop’s most detailed fashion nerd, used his time off stage to show off the stuff you don’t know about yet—or the stuff you do know about and won’t be able to purchase. He wore leather pants from tech-goth-streetwear brand Alyx, a leather vest to match up top, and Jordans—an upcoming collab—with cute little army pockets on them. The underpinnings were even more exclusive: a base layer from Alyx designer Matthew Williams’ just-released Nike collaboration, and a puffy, cartoon-charm-enhanced belt that appeared on Virgil Abloh’s Louis Vuitton runway less than a month ago.

Abloh and Williams are two of the most buzzed-about designers on the planet, but that buzz is still limited to people that know what a chest rig is. 100 million people watched the Super Bowl last year; we can assume a comparable number watched last night. Which means significant reach for luxury streetwear, accessormorphis, and highest-grade fashion, or whatever you want to call it. When luxury tactical menswear gets prime placement at the Super Bowl, it’s no longer a niche concern.