Micah Saltzman was in Athens, Ohio, scrolling Instagram when he saw his direct messages light up.
In his inbox was a post of Joe Burrow wearing Saltzman’s heart-emblazoned sherpa jacket while walking into the biggest game of his professional football career.
“It was a full-on surprise, for sure,” Saltzman said.
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Complete with rimless “buffs” sunglasses, a black turtleneck and an iced-out pendant on his neck, it was a look that exuded confidence — if nothing else.
Saltzman, a 21-year-old budding model/fashion designer, had sent Burrow, his older brother Zacciah’s close friend, a box of his new designs before the season.
Burrow waited until the AFC Championship, when all eyes were on him, to unveil the jacket to the world. And he wanted it to be a surprise.
“Last week, he hit me up and he’s like, ‘Yo, don’t tell your brother, so it’ll be a surprise, but have you seen the jacket he just made? That shit’s sick,’” Zacciah said. “He said, ‘It’s not even because it’s your brother. I just really like the design.’”
“That was very generous of him,” Micah said.
The jacket went viral, and Saltzman’s streetwear-inspired brand Live2Love got an influx of orders, particularly after a GQ writer delved into Burrow’s newfound trendsetter status and linked to the website. Now Saltzman is taking pre-orders on a coat that he designed on his iPad in Athens, Ohio.
It’s not the first time Burrow has surprised someone by wearing their design. At a Nov. 28 game, he wore a Bengals-themed BlaCk OWned Outerwear satin bomber jacket to a game. He had offered to do it during his rookie season, but he tore his ACL before it could happen.
“We had no idea that Burrow was going to wear that jacket on that day,” BlaCk OWned Outerwear CEO Means Cameron told The Athletic’s Rhiannon Walker. “In fact, it wasn’t on our mind, he just popped up. Someone said, ‘Hey, you catch ESPN?’ And then we saw it.”
By making the Super Bowl in his second year in the league, Burrow, a national champion in college and the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NFL draft, has reached a new level of fame, one that comes with an almost unnatural degree of attention. Not since the days of Chad Ochocinco have the nuts-and-bolts-focused Bengals reporters had to endure all of these superfluous questions about high fashion.
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Like it or not, when Burrow, after leading the Bengals to their first playoff victory in 31 years, wears rimless, rose-colored Cartier sunglasses ( or “buffs”) to the press conference, people are going to pay attention. He’s not Cam Newton, challenging paradigms every game, but with his boyish looks and rock-solid confidence, Burrow can pull off a look.
Does Joe Burrow have on buffs??!!! 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/dhSaBwqg2X
— ANTHONY ADAMS (@spiceadams) January 16, 2022
“When I found us trying to find pink-tinted glasses for our staff to wear in the stores, I knew that it had reached a different level with him,” said Josh Sneed, one of the co-founders of Cincy Shirts, a T-shirt company that is in the business of churning out Bengals and Burrow clothing.
Sneed and his team immediately incorporated the picture of Burrow in the glasses into a pop-art style shirt with the nickname “Joey Warhol.” It’s currently the company’s top seller, Sneed said, “and it’s not really close.”
Burrow, of course, has brought the attention on himself by wearing fancy jewelry and $1,000 pink sunglasses to and from his job as the Bengals starting quarterback, where players are captured on film like they’re walking a runway when they enter the stadium.
And to Burrow’s credit, he’s handled the additional questioning with aplomb. Some athletes bristle at the extra attention they overtly crave, but when asked if the diamonds in his chain were real after the AFC Championship, Burrow said, “I make too much money for them to be fake.”
As for his newfound influencer status, “I don’t really consciously think about it,” Burrow said during a Monday media appearance for Super Bowl week.
“I just wear stuff I think I would like,” he said. “It’s not like I’m shopping and go, oh, everyone would love this. I just don’t care what anybody thinks about what I wear or what I do. I just wear what I like.”
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The Joe Burrow wardrobe contains multitudes, from suits to streetwear. So he might wear a Spongebob Squarepants “Krusty Krab” sweatshirt and a Santa hat to a post-game press conference. Or it might be a suit. Micah Saltzman said he heard a comparison of Burrow’s style to the famous swinging days of Joe Namath, which he can see.
“He also carries himself as like a professional businessman,” Saltzman said. “So the suit game is sick. I love that.”
To those who have known him, Burrow’s confidence in wearing whatever he wants isn’t a surprise. But seeing him in the digital pages of GQ was not what people were expecting out of him.
“That blows my mind,” said Trae Williams, who played with Burrow at Athens High School after transferring in when his dad got a job coaching with Joe’s father Jimmy Burrow at Ohio University. “Because when I met Joe, and pretty much everybody (at Athens High), they dressed for school as they were going for a run. I saw the football part coming, but not him becoming a fashion icon.”
Like a lot of fashion icons, Burrow finds his equilibrium by mixing high- and low-priced items. The sherpa jacket, which retails for $169.99, was combined with a necklace that costs much, much more. As the GQ article explained, the custom-made JB9 with a swoosh pendant was crafted by Leo Frost, a celebrity jeweler out of Houston.
“My idea behind doing that was like, you know, he’s gonna be one of Nike’s biggest superstars,” Frost told GQ writer Eileen Carter. “He’s rocking with the name Joey Ice.”
“Yeah that necklace, I was surprised about that one,” Joe’s mother Robin said. “But I like it.”
Burrow has more where that comes from. Zacciah Saltzman said Burrow has a Spongebob pendant he’s yet to unveil to the public.
Joe’s parents, a retired college football coach and an elementary school principal, are still living in The Plains, a suburb of Athens, and though they raised him in his leisurewear days, they’re enjoying his newfound fashionista fame, albeit for different reasons.
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“I love it,” Robin said. “I like that he shows his personality and isn’t afraid to go out a little bit outside of the box on things. I think Jimmy has a little bit of a different perspective of that because he’s a little more conservative than I am as far as fashion goes.”
“Well, it’s probably not something I would throw out there,” Jimmy Burrow said. “He just likes to have fun with it, and I think it makes him feel good. Maybe it takes a little of the anxiety, the pressure, off thinking about the game.”
Winning a national title at LSU got Burrow more than his share of street cred, digital and otherwise. It was there that he started to develop his public persona — confident but not brash, bold and likable — and important people have noticed.
“I already knew he had a lotta drip since he went to LSU,” Houston rapper/jewelry designer Paul Wall wrote in a text message. “But I’m impressed with his jewelry game. He’s wearing some top-quality stuff. Me and Johnny (Dang) are ready to make him some grillz to match!”
This message was passed along to Burrow through Zacciah Saltzman, who reported that Burrow’s Bengals receiver and former LSU teammate, Ja’Marr Chase, already had it covered.
Everyone, it seems, has an interest in seeing Joe Burrow shine.
(Graphic: John Bradford / The Athletic; photos: Jonathan Bachman / Getty Images, Scott Winters / Icon Sportswire)
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