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Hey there! It’s Nikki Lo with another blog post, although this one is a little different than what I usually write.

If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know I have quite a few posts all about game day outfit inspiration.

In this post, I'm switching into fashion critic mode and taking an analytical look at game day outfits.

I'm breaking down what exactly defines them, looking at the trends within the trend, why they're so popular, and talking about issues like the lack of diversity within this trend and other social media aesthetics.

And of course, there’ll be some outfit inspiration sprinkled in here and there! Without further ado, enjoy the article!

Defining The “Game Day Outfit”

If you’re a college student who goes to a school with a big sports culture, or if you’re a sports fan at all (particularly college sports, more on that later), chances are you’ve encountered game day fashion.

Maybe you’ve even worn the style yourself! Let’s start by defining a game day outfit. It’s exactly what it sounds like: an outfit that’s worn to a sporting event or on “game day.”

But there’s more to it than that. What does a game day outfit actually look like?

A quick Pinterest or Google search for “game day outfit inspiration” will pull up images like these:

cute game day outfit inspiration — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

Let’s discuss. An obvious thing you’ll notice is that all of these images feature women, indicating that this is a female-dominated fashion trend.

There is a small subset of this trend for men’s game day fashion, but more on that later.

You’ll notice these women wearing lots of bold colors, usually the team colors of whatever school they attend, school imagery, big letters, patterns, and bold accessories like big hats, funky sunglasses, funky jewelry, pins, and more.

Everything is big, bold, and demands attention.

It’s as if the point of wearing this type of outfit on game day is to be as visually “loud” as possible in order to showcase pride for your favorite team or school.

Why Do We Wear Clothes Related To Sports Teams?

That brings me to a potential “why” of game day fashion: showing off your spirit. But then the question arises of why do sports fans take showing off their team spirit so seriously?

Stemming from game day fashion, why do we buy sports jerseys, merchandise, and learn chants and songs to cheer on our favorite team on game day?

One possible answer lies in the fact that as humans, we crave a sense of belonging.

It’s the same psychology behind what makes personality quizzes like Myers-Briggs and even BuzzFeed so popular.

This quote from an article by Psychology Today talks about the power of feeling like you belong somewhere:

“A friend of mine recently described her experience of taking the MBTI for the first time when she was in high school. As an artist, she felt different from her peers, and she said it was a great comfort to know that “there were others out there like [me].” Feeling understood and normal, perhaps for the first time, is a powerful experience…”

I think it goes all the way back to our caveman and cavewoman days when we lived in tribes.

We may not live in tribes today the way our ancestors did, but we still find ways to group ourselves with other people who share similar characteristics, like being a fan of the same sports team.

So in a way, a sports fanbase is sort of like a modern day tribe. So, why do we dress a certain way on game day?

Because we want to represent our “tribe” (or in this case, our school/team), and showcase that we belong to that “tribe.”

Exploring Potential Origins

How did this trend come to exist in the first place? Let’s talk about its potential origins.

A style that I think is most reminiscent of game day fashion is that of cheerleading uniforms.

If you compare cheerleading uniforms throughout different time periods with modern game day apparel, you’ll notice the similarities.

cheerleaders — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

With both, I see plenty of bold letters, team colors, and patterns, short skirts, form-fitting clothing, and big accessories like hair bows, among other things.

The main differences being that cheerleading uniforms are made to be active in and thus usually use different materials, and of course cheerleaders wear specific types of sneakers (usually plain white) that they can safely move, stunt, and tumble in.

Both from a visual and functional standpoint, it makes sense for game day fashion to have potentially evolved from that of cheerleaders.

Both have similar functions when it comes to self expression: to express team pride and support.

Both are worn at sporting events, so the same audiences are exposed to both of these styles and are able to take inspiration from them, continually evolving both genres of fashion.

The Trends Within The Trend

Now, let’s look at some individual trends I’ve seen within game day fashion.

Tube Tops

Bandanas

game day outfit orange — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

Preppy/Ultra feminine Style

Pins/Buttons

aesthetic game day buttons — *Source: etsy.com*

Boots

Flare Pants

Stadium Bags

football game stadium bag — *Source:* *etsy.com*

Face Paint

Fringe

cute college game day outfits — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

Themed Looks (Ex: White Out & Black Out Outfits)

white out football game outfit ideas — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

The Men’s Variant - Does It Even Exist?

The entirety of this article so far has focused on women’s fashion, so let’s turn the tide a little bit and talk about what game day outfits look like for men. Guys want to look good on game day too, after all!

Some commonalities I noticed when researching the men’s version of this trend included lots of polo shirts, sunglasses, jerseys, graphic tees, and baseball caps.

When comparing this to the women’s version of this style, I noticed that both featured bright and bold colors with plenty of lettering and imagery representing a specific team.

While I did find enough inspiration to piece together some of these trends, Pinterest and Google produced far less results for men’s game day fashion than for women’s.

In fact, women’s fashion ideas still came up quite frequently even when using search queries geared towards men’s fashion.

I really only found two articles dedicated to men’s game day outfits, from Bro Bible and Do Say Give.

I find it interesting that a trend centered around sports, a stereotypically male interest, is so female-dominated.

So, let’s explore some potential reasons as to why. My main theory goes back to what I talked about earlier: the clothes we wear can help us establish a sense of belonging.

In stereotypically male dominated scenes like sporting events, unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for women to feel out of place, ignored, and undervalued.

So, it would make sense that dressing in a way that screams “I am a part of something” through bold team colors and imagery helps women feel more included at sporting events, both with the entire fanbase and with other women who are a part of it.

This would also help explain why there’s so much less men’s game day fashion inspiration on the internet than women’s.

Since men (who are white, straight, and cisgender) have always been accepted in the world of sports, they don’t need the help of fashion to feel included.

Problematic Representation

Now, let’s talk about actual representation of the trend on blogs, on Pinterest, on social media, and pretty much anywhere you’d be able to find fashion inspiration online.

The first thing that jumps out to me is the lack of representation I see when it comes to skin color, gender, age, and body type across visual media relating to game day outfits.

Most of the people you’ll see in these inspiration photos, and all of them in this screenshot I took from Pinterest, are white, young, female, and skinny.

game day outfit ideas — *Source:* *pinterest.com*

It should be noted that you can search for inspiration tailored away from this mainstream beauty standard using terms like “black girl game day outfit” and “game day outfit plus size,” and still be met with a decent amount of results.

However, the fact that you have to specifically search for that type of inspiration indicates that they’re still treated as “alternate” or “niche” looks rather than part of the mainstream.

Diversity in fashion and online media is improving, but there’s still work to do.

The Problem With “Aesthetics” On The Internet

This brings me to the topic of “aesthetics” on the internet. I’ll start by talking about what exactly is an aesthetic?

If you’ve spent any time on the lifestyle and fashion sides of Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest, you’re probably already thinking of a few, but let’s still give it a definition.

To me, an “aesthetic” is a collection of visual imagery that represents a certain lifestyle - one that’s both ideal, desirable, and visually appealing.

That visual imagery can contain anything from a trendy brand’s logo, to certain colors, textures, patterns, or even feature specific objects or activities.

Let’s look at one aesthetic in particular: “that girl,” which peaked in winter and spring of 2022 but still remains fairly popular as of this writing in May 2023.

The best way to sum up this aesthetic is to actually show you what it looks like:

that girl aesthetic inspiration — *Source:* *Google Images*

So, what do we see? For colors, lots of neutrals, but also plenty of green, signifying minimalism, simplicity, sophistication, wellness, and health.

When it comes to imagery, you’ll see lots of girls working out, reading, working on laptops, journaling, eating pretty fruit and veggie bowls, and doing skincare.

This tells me that this trend emphasizes the importance of self care, self love, healthy living, being productive, and being in tune with yourself.

Basically, it’s an example of an “ideal” lifestyle for women, particularly younger women in their teens to early thirties.

So now we know what a “that girl” lifestyle looks like, but what does “that girl” herself look like?

If you look at visual media associated with the trend, the women represented are almost always white and skinny.

My Google Images search (screenshotted above) barely produced any images featuring Black women, and even less of non-Black women of color.

This lack of diversity within the trend gives the impression that you can’t be “that girl” if you’re a person of color, overweight, or look different in any way from the women in the images.

This says that the way you look isn’t aesthetic, ideal, or desirable if you don’t look like those women.

So how does this relate back to game day fashion? Well, you’ll find that like “that girl,” the “game day” girl aesthetic is often represented by thin, white, young women and presents the same issues when it comes to a lack of diversity and inclusion.

And this problem goes beyond these two aesthetics. It goes beyond social media and the internet. It’s an issue prevalent in media of all forms.

Why College Sports?

Another thing you’ll notice about game day fashion is the outfits are almost always geared towards college sports and not professional ones.

This struck me as interesting. Do fans of professional sports not want to dress up and show team pride? Why is the majority of this trend focused on college athletics?

One possible explanation is simply the fact that younger people, historically, are the trend-setters of society.

Since this type of fashion is geared towards young adults, specifically college-aged women, the fashion itself reflects that.

Staples of the trend like crop tops and short shorts and skirts are worn more frequently by younger women than by older ones.

So, it makes sense that older sports fans simply aren’t interested in a fashion trend that doesn’t appeal to them or their age group.

Why College Football?

Something else you’ll notice with this genre is most of the fashion inspiration is created with the intention of being worn to a college football game.

Of course, these outfits can be worn at any type of sporting event, but by far the most popular is college football.

Let’s talk about a potential reason for this. According to this article from PBS, college football is consistently the highest revenue generator for the NCAA out of all college sports.

A big part of that revenue is merchandise: jerseys, team branded clothing, memorabilia, and more.

There are a lot of college football fans out there, and those fans spend a lot of money on college football related clothing - including game day outfits.

So, because of its sheer popularity and consistently high revenue generation, it makes sense that majority of the visual media for this trend focuses on college football.

Perfectly Set Up For Virality

And speaking of visual media, let’s talk about where inspiration for this style is both found and shared.

Social media is the obvious answer, but when we look further, Instagram and Pinterest are the two largest inspiration sources.

This is thanks to the incredibly visual nature of both platforms, the younger age demographic that primarily uses Instagram, and the primarily female audience of Pinterest.

To simplify, the audience for the trend and the audience using the platforms where the trend “lives” match.

Related to social media, I also want to talk about the inherently shareable nature of the trend.

Both the outfits themselves and the environment in which they’re photographed (a football stadium) tend to be very visually appealing and eye-catching.

Combine that with the visual nature of the platforms these images are usually shared on, the trend sets itself up perfectly for virality.

Another term I think fits here is that these outfits are extremely “Instagrammable.”

All this has helped the game day fashion trend become popular enough to sustain entire companies.

Just a few of the businesses that have made their success by selling this style include Game Day Couture, Lojo Bands, Hype And Vice, and S ideline Clothing.

And when there are entire companies dedicated to selling one type of fashion, I’d argue that type of fashion has evolved from a trend into a full on genre.

Outro & Closing Thoughts

Whew! That was a lot. Anyways, that is my comprehensive breakdown of game day fashion - plus some commentary no one asked for.

I talked about everything from how it began, its visual aspects and influences, and how it got so popular to begin with.

I hope you found this article thought-provoking, and thanks for reading. I’ll see you in my next post!

If you enjoyed reading this, definitely check out these posts next:

11 Cute University of Texas Game Day Outfits (Go Longhorns!)

11 Penn State Game Day Outfit Ideas Perfect For Cold Weather

For handmade digital art prints, icon packs, wallpapers, & more designed by me, be sure to stop by my digital boutique: Designed By Nikki Lo.

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Game Day Fashion: Breaking Down The Trend Dominating Every College Football Stadium