Travis Kelce is putting the fashion in football.
The Kansas City Chiefs tight end, 34, is not only capturing attention for his romance with pop megastar Taylor Swift and his skills on the field. Kelce has emerged as an unexpected trendsetter thanks to his bold game-day looks, which include designer tracksuits and crushed velvet cargo pants.
In a new interview with WSJ Magazine, Kelce admitted to being a style-obsessed “impulse shopper” who spends at least three hours picking out an outfit for his short commute to the locker room before each game.
“I kind of just do it off of instinct,” Kelce told the outlet of assembling a look from his cavernous closet, which is actually a converted bedroom and houses a collection of more than 300 sneakers alone.
Despite his well-stocked closet, and the fact that he spends much of his free time scrolling fashion sites such as Ssense and Farfetch for new finds, Kelce said he still finds himself scrambling to get dressed on game day.
“It really just goes down to the wire,” he explained. “I kind of enjoy the creative process of the panic to just throw something together.”
He acknowledged that not everyone is going to be a fan of his more offbeat looks. Indeed, the KidSuper Studio printed denim set he wore after the Chiefs’ Sept. 24 matchup with the Chicago Bears was roasted on Twitter, with some saying the paint splatter design looked like “Bounty paper towels” or a painter’s work clothes.
“Obviously, not every look is for everybody,” Kelce said, referencing the criticism. “I’m not going to be offended if somebody says I look like a clown if I got a fun hat on and some wacky jeans. It is what it is, I’m gonna have fun with it.”
“For the most part, I do it to put a smile on somebody’s face,” he added.
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The aforementioned set just so happened to be what Kelce was wearing when he and Swift, 33, sparked a frenzy while making their first public appearance together at Arrowhead Stadium, where she watched the game from his box. In honor of the moment, KidSuper Studio renamed the set “1989 Bedroom Painting” in a nod to Swift’s 2014 album 1989.
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Kelce said his interest in fashion was first sparked when he was a kid, playing football in his hometown of Westlake, Ohio, in the Cleveland suburbs.
“Playing a sport growing up, like I always wanted to wear a headband, I always wanted to have a certain pair of shoes,” he explained.
By his college years, he was “balling on a budget,” as he put it, hunting for deals from online streetwear shops like Karmaloop. When he first began his career in the NFL, however, he felt he had to take a more conservative approach and tone down his dressing aesthetic.
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Later, armed with a football star-sized budget, he let himself go wild and experiment. “Money gave me access to certain designers and just certain fabrics that I absolutely love now,” he admitted.
He recalled making his first big splurge right after going pro, spending a chunk of his salary on a rare pair of Nike Air Mag sneakers which weren’t even his size. “Earlier on in my career, when they didn’t have all these sneaker apps, it was whatever size I could get in the shoe that I wanted,” he explained.
Since then, he’s had the money and connections to build a kicks collection that would make any die-hard sneakerhead drool.
Last month, Kelce spoke to PEOPLE about how he likes to spend his off-days, saying his downtime routine always includes a little online shopping.
“I’m a huge online shopper, so I’ll jump online and grab a whole bunch of new stuff that I could throw around the house or throw in my closet,” he shared. “Yeah, the possibilities are endless.”
