Travis Scott Keeps Sneaking Nikes Onto the Red Carpet

Travis Scott didn’t need a towering wooden horse to shake up The Odyssey’s red carpet in mid-July. He just needed to wear his formal sportswear.

It was Scott's pairing of an unreleased Moon Shoe — tied to the ongoing collab between Nike and Scott's Cactus Jack brand — with a great vintage pair of Oakley Valve 1.0s, an archival 2003 model from the athletic eyewear company that Scott happens to be Chief Visionary for, that gave his sharply tailored, double-breasted suit (allegedly Saint Laurent) a necessary edge. These covetable new Nikes, in other words, were a Trojan horse for Scott's surprisingly suave suiting style.

Scott is better known for a distinctly lived-in-looking style of grungy streetwear than tailoring, but he makes it work here primarily by making it all his own. Note the scuffed and worn-in shoes — sporting an inverted Swoosh that’s become a signature of his Nike partnership — which look as though they've survived their own odyssey to make it to the premiere, and the retro-cool Oakleys which both gently jar against his urbane two-piece.

In a way, Scott really has survived trials and tribulations here. Though he’d worked with Christopher Nolan before on an original song for Tenet, it was Scott’s casting as a singing bard in the retelling of Homer’s Greek epic that set off a wave of backlash (alongside fire directed at Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen, plus a million other stupid quibbles). 

With the film now released and, surprise, Scott’s small role already garnering praise, his red carpet appearance is very much a victory lap, with his Odyssey premiere outfits a case study in understated infiltration. A suit is to be expected — but this is a suit, the Travis Scott way.

The best part of Scott's look is how it toyed with convention, subverting a relatively tame suit in favor of a mix of new and old. Brand-new shoes, decades-old eyewear. It's a good enough trick to bear repeating. On a different stop on his Odyssey tour, Scott repped another sleek suit (again, seemingly YSL) with another pair of vintage shades, this time from Gucci's Tom Ford era.  

Scott provides a prime example of how to make suits work in the modern age. The trick isn't to lean into crazy silhouettes or statement patterns but find the fit that works for you and have some fun with it. Suits demand swag. Unreleased Nikes? Well, that's your call.

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