Tunnel Fits: Who Really Chooses What Athletes Wear?

Watch enough tunnel walks and a pattern starts to show. The coat changes every week. So do the trainers, the trousers and, most weeks, the whole look, all pulled together for thirty seconds between the team bus and the locker room door. What usually doesn't change is the chain round his neck. Same piece, same pendant, game after game and season after season.

With the NBA season getting under way on 20 October and the NFL already well into its own, the tunnel is about to get busy again. And with more and more of the outfit picked by stylists and brands, the real question isn't what players are wearing. It's who chose it, and why the one piece that never changes is the one that sits closest to them.

How thirty seconds turned into a catwalk

For a long time, the walk-in was nothing. A tracksuit or a team suit, headphones on, straight past the cameras and into the changing room. Nobody paid it much attention, least of all the players.

Then the cameras moved closer. Teams and leagues worked out that those few seconds before tip-off were one of the only times fans got to see players as people rather than numbers on a shirt. Every arrival started getting posted, fans started ranking them, and players, fairly enough, started dressing for it.

Now it has its own name, its own coverage and, according to one columnist writing earlier this month, a multimillion-dollar industry behind it. The walk-in has become a season inside the season.

So who's really getting him dressed?

Here's the thing. A lot of the biggest names don't dress themselves for it, or at least not entirely. Plenty of basketball's stars reportedly work with personal stylists, and a lot of looks arrive through brand partnerships, with labels lending or gifting pieces in the hope they'll be caught on camera. In 2024 the NFL went further still, appointing Kyle Smith as its first fashion editor, a role that includes advising players on their style and building links between the league and the fashion world.

None of that is a scandal. Most of us get a second opinion on what we wear, whether it's from a partner, a mate or the person behind the counter. But it does change what the walk-in is. If a stylist pulled the coat, a brand sent the trainers and the league's social team chose the angle, the outfit starts to look less like a statement and more like a collaboration.

Even Smith, whose job sits right in the middle of all this, has said the reason people care about athlete style is that it feels authentic: players wearing what they choose, not what they've been paid to promote. Which brings us back to the chain.

Why the chain is the one thing that stays

Look past the coat for a second. Week to week, the outfit rotates, and that's the whole point of it. A tailored overcoat one game, a vintage jersey the next, a full runway look after that. But round the neck, very often, it's the same piece. The same chain, the same pendant, the same small detail that was there in last season's photos too. It's rarely the thing the look is built around. It's the thing the look has to work with.

That's not a coincidence, because jewellery has never worked the way clothes do. A coat is bought for a season and swapped when the next one comes along. A chain tends to arrive with a story already attached. It was a gift from someone who mattered, or the first thing bought with the first proper wage. It was handed down, or picked out to mark the day something finally came good. Clothes say what kind of mood you're in. Jewellery says who you are, and who you've got with you.

It's also the one thing you wear that sits against your skin all day. You don't notice a jacket after the first ten minutes, but most men who wear a chain every day will tell you they reach for it without thinking: in a meeting, on a hard day, in the moment before something that matters. That's why it doesn't rotate with everything else. You don't swap out something that carries a person, a place or a promise. You just keep wearing it.

And in most sports, the walk-in is the last time anyone sees it. Once the kit goes on, the rules usually say the jewellery comes off, which is something we've asked questions about before. Maybe that's why it so often stays the same. It isn't part of the outfit. It's part of the player.

Isn't that just another performance?

It's a fair pushback, and it's worth taking seriously. The tunnel is lit, staged and watched by millions, so maybe nothing that happens there is really self-expression. Even the chain is on camera. Even the piece that means something is being worn in front of the biggest audience of the week. On that view, the tunnel's been bought, and the only honest look is the one a player wears when nobody's filming: the drive home, the school run, the day off.

We'd agree with some of that. A walk built for the camera will always be part performance, and a look pulled together by a stylist and a brand isn't the same as one a player put together himself.

But performance and self-expression aren't opposites. Most of us dress a little differently when we know we'll be seen, whether it's a first day, a wedding or a night out, and none of that makes it fake. The real test isn't whether there's a camera. It's whether the piece would still be there if there wasn't.

Wear what's yours, camera or not

That test works for the rest of us too. Most guys have two kinds of things they wear: the pieces that come out for the moment, and the ones that never really come off. The first lot changes every season. The second lot doesn't, and that's where the meaning lives.

That's the kind of jewellery we've always cared about. Not the piece that finishes this week's look, but the chain you'd wear on an ordinary Tuesday, or the pendant that marks something only you need to understand. It's the one that's still there when the cameras, the stylist and the second opinions have all gone home.

It's the same idea that sits behind Back Yourself. You don't wear it to be seen. You wear it because it's yours.

So when the tunnel fills back up this week, look past the coat and the trainers. The outfit is what someone wanted you to see.

More often than not, the chain is the bit he chose.