Read more
Equal parts stunning, photo-heavy look book and cultural commentary, Fly is the story of the undeniable intersection of high fashion and basketball. Organized by era, each section is broken down by the style of the time and the cultural influence surrounding it: beginning with the league's inception in 1949, pre-civil rights movement?when the NBA was mostly white players who wore suits and skinny ties. From the years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the birth of funk and R&B when basketball fashion got flashier, with some players wearing fur coats and big hats (think Walt Clyde Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain), to the Michael Jordan era of the 80s and 90s, with big, oversize suits. And on to the epic Iverson or Hip-Hop Era, in the early 2000s, with the birth of the "tunnel walk.? Today, athletes are idealized not only as fashion icons but also social activists. We're talking about the biggest names: Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Dwayne Wade, Kyrie Irving, and Lebron James (who could forget his "I Can't Breathe? T-shirt). The conversationis no longer limited to athletic performance or what these athletes are wearing?they are expressing their fashion sense in what has become an important cultural moment.
About the author
Mitchell S. Jackson is the winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and the 2021 National Magazine Award in Feature Writing. Jackson is the critically acclaimed author of The Residue Years, Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family, and John of Watts (to be published soon). His other honors include fellowships, grants, and awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, the Cullman Center of the New York Public Library, the Lannan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, PEN America, TED, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Center for Fiction. His writing has been featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Time, Esquire, and Marie Claire, as well as in The New Yorker, Harpers, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, The Guardian, The Washington Post Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. Jackson’s nonfiction book Survival Math was published in 2019 and named a best book of the year by fifteen publications, including NPR, Time, The Paris Review, The Root, Kirkus Reviews, and Buzzfeed. His next novel John of Watts will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Jackson is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, covers race and culture as the first Black columnist in the history of Esquire, and serves as the John O. Whiteman Dean’s Distinguished Professor in the English Department of Arizona State University.
Summary
Equal parts photo-rich lookbook, and cultural commentary, Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion is the story of the extraordinary intersection of high fashion and basketball, from the league's inception to today, and celebrates the iconic style of NBA athletes * A USA Today Bestseller
Each chapter explores the style of an era and the cultural influences that shaped it: The league’s inception in 1949, pre-Civil Rights Movement, when the NBA was mostly comprised of white players who wore suits and skinny ties. The years following the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the birth of funk and R&B when basketball fashion got flashier (think Walt “Clyde” Frazier and Wilt Chamberlain wearing fur coats and big hats). The Michael Jordan era of the 1980s and 1990s, with its oversize suits. The epic Iverson/Hip-Hop years of the late 1990s and early 2000s. And now to today, a time defined not only by social media and high fashion’s birthing of the tunnel walk (think LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Russell Westbrook), but one in which athletes are idealized as style icons and activists, figures who inspire conversations beyond how they play and what they wear.
Foreword
Equal parts photo-heavy look book and cultural commentary, Fly: The Big Book of Basketball Fashion celebrates the iconic style of NBA athletes and tells the story of the evolution of fashion in the NBA from the league's inception to today
