The day after winning the gold medal in the men’s 100 meters at the Paris Games, Noah Lyles set his sights not on more titles and records but on a more fashion-oriented goal: a pair of sneakers named after him. “I want my own shoe. I want my own trainer. Dead serious,” he told reporters. Not a trainer for other athletes to run in, he stressed, but a shoe with the same legendary potential as an Adidas Stan Smith (named after the former U.S. tennis champion) or Nike’s Air Jordan (named after basketball star Michael Jordan).
It’s a testament to how seriously Lyles takes the reputation he’s built as a fashion star who also happens to be a world-class sprinter. “The most important thing is to run fast, but it’s cool to run fast and look good,” Usain Bolt once said. Now, Lyles is rediscovering what it means to look good as an athlete. And it goes way beyond having the flashiest tracksuit in the lineup: He’s got the fashion world at his feet.
Most athletes fill their Instagram feeds with somewhat dull training updates, but you could be forgiven for landing on Lyles’s page and assuming you’re scrolling through photos posted by fashion’s latest big influencer. He marked his birthday last month with a photoshoot at the Barbican, wearing a Louis Vuitton T-shirt, his nails emblazoned with the word “icon.” Earlier in the summer, he posed alongside Snoop Dogg in a sleek Gucci x Adidas suit with Dr. Martens loafers and Fendi sunglasses.
“Noah’s style is completely representative of who he is,” says Maya Bruney, the photographer behind that Barbican shoot and the founder of Track and Fits, a platform that promotes the synergy between athletics and fashion. “Just as he is on the track, with fashion he’s a rule breaker, he’s very confident and he doesn’t care what other people think. He personifies this new movement of personal style, he paints his nails and does what he likes, which is quite special in a world full of traditionalists.”
Track and field athletes have a long tradition of sporting sneakers and tracksuits, but it’s rare to see them wearing anything else. That’s where Lyles breaks the mold; “I told him, ‘Please don’t wear sneakers, be yourself, wear what you really like,’” Bruney says. Lyles happily obliged. “He’s gotten negative press about the way he dresses, but he’s risen above it,” Bruney adds.
He’s fully embraced his bold, confident approach to fashion, and introduced a whole new element to athletic meets. Since last year, Lyles has been imitating NBA and NFL players and their use of the stadium tunnel as a kind of runway. Working with his stylist Kwasi Kessie, Lyles now shows up to games not in off-the-rack clothes but in carefully curated looks from a mix of big houses and understated designers, turning what was once an unremarkable routine into a fashion moment with viral potential. “He’s doubled his following since he started doing walk-ins. It’s completely elevated his personal brand,” says Bruney.
Elsewhere, too, Lyles has defied our usual expectations of athleticism. He recently started wearing pearls in his hair—an unexpectedly delicate antidote to the power and strength sprinters need at the top of their game. For the premiere of the Netflix documentary series Sprint , in which he stars, he wore head-to-toe white, a nod to his pearl obsession—a look that included a sequined Amiri jacket, a beaded Simone Rocha T-shirt, and Bode pants. For an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s talk show, he opted for a leather jacket by Parisian fashion house Celine with Saint Laurent pants and chunky cowboy boots: not your typical running attire.
“He’s just stylish,” Kessie recently told Women’s Wear Daily about his friend and client’s approach to fashion. “What I mean by that is he’s not a [style] like, ‘I’m going to be a rock star or I’m going to wear streetwear.’ It depends on the intention of the outfit and the energy he wants to put out. To me, he’s just stylish. He doesn’t check one box. He has a keen sense of fashion and style.”
Like most athletes at the height of their powers, Lyles has already signed sponsorship deals with a major sportswear brand (Adidas) and a luxury watchmaker (Omega). Unlike many athletes, however, he even wore his Omega watch to the 100-meter final, showing off the £13,500 Speedmaster watch to the world as he raced around the track at the Stade de France, a statement of his commitment to adding his unique showmanship twist to his ambassadorial deals. But as Lyles indicated in his post-race press conference, he’d like his Olympic gold to open many more doors to fashion, just as Emma Raducanu’s 2021 US Open victory led to deals with Dior and Tiffany being signed within days of the final.
“Noah Lyles could easily become a hugely powerful brand ambassador for any company post-Olympics, not just because of his performance at the Games and how that will raise his profile, but also because he has a natural charisma that really comes through in social content,” says Sara McCorquodale, founder of influencer intelligence agency Corq. “In luxury, that’s often missing. There’s beauty, style and sometimes eccentricity, but not the kind of confident X-factor that Lyles seems to have in bucketloads. For example, Burberry’s partnership with footballer Son Heung-Min is really interesting, but we don’t really get a sense of his personality through his campaigns. A talent like Lyles is an incredible partner for a luxury brand in the TikTok era.”
Through his partnership with Kessie, Lyles has created a look that effortlessly combines major design houses and lesser-known brands – something that should be a huge draw for luxury houses looking for a cool factor. “I’m sure Lyles will have his pick of brands after the Games, but I’d love to see a big global collaboration with Prada,” says McCorquodale. “He would bring such freshness and relevance, and also a new twist on styling.”
Could next year’s big trainer be the Prada Lyles? Watch this space.
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