In Artist Uniform, a column for Highsnobiety, Chris Erik Thomas traces how personal style shapes an artist's identity.

You might know Russell Westbrook as the nine-time NBA All-Star. The one with a record-breaking streak of triple-doubles — ask a basketball friend what that means. But real ones know there’s more to the freshly-retired baller than his on-court stats. 

See, this athlete is also an artist. Not in the conventional paint-on-canvas sense, but in the way he throws together outfits. Clothes are his tool; his body, the fresco. His approach to personal style has become an art form unto itself, reflecting a trained eye honed not only on the finer threads in life but on how they can be arranged, organized, and still-life’d onto himself. 

Just look to his many “tunnel walk” fits as proof. During his nearly 20-year career, the stretch of inconspicuous arena hallway going from the locker room to the court became Westbrook’s runway. 

But while his outfit virtuosity may have quickly endeared him to a world outside the NBA — he’s attended many Fashion Weeks and Met Galas (mostly shirtless); he’s even collaborated on an Acne Studios collection — there’s no extricating Westbrook’s love for dressing from his athleticism. As he noted in a 2013 interview, he always chose each piece on his own because, as with his position as a point guard, he likes being in control.

Few sports have proven as fertile a space to flex your fashion sense as basketball. 

From Dennis Rodman’s maximalist, controversially gender-bending style in the 1990s to the sharp, colorful suits of Walt "Clyde" Frazier in the 70s, swagger has been just as important a skill to some players as their dribble and three-pointers. What set Westbrook apart isn’t just that he was more stylish than his forebears; it’s that his ascent to Fashion King status has coincided with the rise of image-focused social media. 

Two years after the launch of Instagram (and, interestingly, two months after Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion), Westbrook notched his first major fashion moment: His June 2012 post-game press conference saw him pair bright red frames, sans lenses, with a loud print Prada button-up shirt “that was busier than his third quarter against the Miami Heat,” per a snarky NYT write-up.

Though that look has been pinned as the origin point for a career’s worth of extravagant looks, it also marked the end of a childhood dream. Westbrook was always fashion-curious as a kid growing up in a gritty, working-class neighborhood in South Central LA; it was his career, and the income it provided, that finally let him explore that curiosity. “Basketball is the axis that allows me to do the things that I do,” he told Time in 2017. “[It's] one way to express yourself, as is what you wear.”

When Westbrook started in the NBA in 2008, its players were stylistically muzzled by an archaic and arguably regressive dress code instituted in 2005 that favored tailored suits, sweaters, and stale button-ups. Now, as he leaves the league, his run of eccentric fits hasn’t just shattered norms; it’s reshaped the sport, full stop. 

Westbrook’s own style may be divisive (to be expected when you pair, say, a porkpie hat with a poncho), but his use of clothing as a tool to shape his image made him the most modern baller in the game and an artist in his own right.

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