Rap star Kendrick Lamar’s $1,760 bell-bottom jeans steal Super Bowl half-time show

NEW YORK – Could it be that the lasting impact of Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl half-time show will be the return of bell-bottoms?

At half-time of a fairly dull game – unless you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan – in New Orleans on Feb 9, the American rapper materialised onstage, flanked by dancers in monotonal outfits of either blue, red or white, dressed in clothes that clearly represented Team Lamar.

The 37-year-old’s varsity jacket, custom-made by Martine Rose, a British designer known for her witty and warped sportswear, was coated with patches to please the Lamarologists in the Superdome.

The front read Gloria, seemingly a reference to the last song on his latest album GNX (2024). The back had a “pgLang” insignia, the creative agency Lamar co-runs with American film-maker and record producer Dave Free.

There were other delectable elements to his outfit: a tilted fitted cap with a feather brooch pinned on the side, as well as a conspicuous “a” chain that some online took to be a head nod to the villainous “A Minor” line in Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track Not Like Us (2024). It was a line that the stadium hollered in unison at the appointed time.

But the piece de resistance, the item that people started texting me about two minutes into his performance, was his jeans, which came from French fashion house Celine. The official product name is the “flared surf jean in summer dazed wash”. At US$1,300 (S$1,760), the jeans do not come cheap.

The Japanese-made jeans were slender at the top but flared at the hem, pooling around Lamar’s black-and-white sneakers. (For several years, Lamar has been styled by Taylor McNeill.)

Their bleachy blue wash was reminiscent of something you would find at Gap in 2000.

Whether this is positive or negative depends on whom you ask. As does the matter of whether they were more boot-cut or bell-bottomed. I would lean towards calling them Woodstock-tinged bell-bottoms. The flare was pretty flarey.

Some online questioned if Lamar had pilfered their mums’ jeans. For my generation, this cut calls to mind American singer Britney Spears and fashion brand Baby Phat. If you are older, your touchstone may be American pop duo Sonny and Cher.

For the Super Bowl’s enormous audience, Lamar’s jeans provided a snapshot into how broad and bizarre the denim market has become.

There are trompe l’oeil jeans, jeans with legs the size of a playground slide – Mustard, Lamar’s producer who joined late in the set, was wearing a pair of those – and jeans with crystals stamped into them.

There is no dominant trend in denim right now. If you want it, you can find it. And Lamar’s bell-bottoms are timid compared with some of the hole-riddled monstrosities you can find.

I am not the first to note that, for men at least, the jean-width preferences have been inverted in the past half decade or so. It is frat bros and conservative politicians who now wear the slim jeans.

The stylistically undaunted? They are in denim parachute pants and Shaggy Rogers flares.

It is only right that Lamar, an intrepid dresser if there ever was one, would be backing bell-bottoms on television’s largest stage.

This man just wore a Canadian tuxedo to the Grammys earlier in February. He has attended Chanel fashion shows in head-to-toe Chanel.

And if Lamar, who reigns over the rap world at the moment, can trickle some of the influence into fashion, people may have to start getting familiar with the flare again. NYTIMES