How Kobe Bryant’s First Stylist Changed His Off-Court Play — Andscape

Stylist Paige Grant I first met Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant on the opening of Phillipe Chow in Beverly Hills, Calif. It was 2009, and the restaurant’s opening coincided with the Lakers cover. Looking back, Geran said it was a pivotal moment for each of them.

“He was going through a transformation,” Geran recalled. “When he went from number 8 to 24, I wouldn’t say he transformed (into himself), but he did transform. He started taking more pictures and going outside.”

Geran had been working with Bryant’s team before the Philippe Chow meeting, normally on small requests. For example, when the rapper Lil Wayne was performing in Los Angeles, and since he was Bryant’s favorite, Bryant wanted Lil Wayne to wear his jersey. Geran delivered the jersey to Lil Wayne’s team.

When Geran connected with Bryant on the opening of the restaurant on his cover, the Lakers star desired to add the stylist to his roster. As his team built a rapport with Geran, they began working together. She would style Bryant from 2009 to 2011.

“It took him a while to get going at first because for him, having a stylist was really confusing,” Geran said. “They were wondering how it would even work. They knew he needed someone, but there weren’t many players who had stylists at the time.”

The biggest change has been working with designers to create custom-made garments which have the Lakers star’s proportions. “Designers now often cater to players’ athletic builds and shoe sizes,” Geran said. “(Designers) are smart now. They’re creating ready-to-wear that players can wear because working with athletes is a gold mine.”

And working with Bryant was easy. “He was incredibly detail-oriented, and as his primary stylist, so was I,” Geran said. “He said, ‘This is your thing. This is my thing. If I know basketball, you know fashion.’” Bryant didn’t offer much guidance, but then he wasn’t into suits.

“He was a lover of high-end luxury, like custom leather jackets and jeans,” she said. “He just wanted to look good, but he didn’t want to spend a lot of time on it. He didn’t like fittings at all. So I had to master the art of being a mad scientist when it came to measurements and measurements.”

Geran describes working with Bryant as unconventional. Typically, a stylist would map out a month’s price of looks for an athlete, but with Bryant, Geran met with him weekly handy over the outfits.

“My collaboration with him was somewhere between slapstick and drama,” she said, describing the handovers. “You had to catch up during the week. I actually had to go to the rehearsal center. I would go to the plane and hand him his stuff if he had trips. I would go straight to a private airport, which is completely unconventional, and, again, he didn’t do fittings.”

One moment Geran remembers is when designer Tom Ford’s personal tailor got here to try on Bryant for Tom Ford suits. Bryant, who was at a physician’s appointment, wanted to fulfill with the tailor immediately after the appointment.

Bryant never knew what he would wear on game day until he opened Geran’s bag. She created an off-the-field style for Bryant that was somewhere between a fresh tackle old Hollywood’s classic suiting and the elevated wardrobe adopted by footballer David Beckham, who traded in baggy pants for slimmer, more tailored silhouettes.

“He’s like, ‘Hey, do you think he can meet me in the parking lot?’ I’m like, ‘No, he’ll think we’re crazy. Can you go back to the rehearsal room?’ He’d be at the Staples Center at a concert and he’d be like, ‘Paige, I’m really cold. Can you bring me a jacket?’ And I’m like, ‘Staples Center?’”

“At that particular moment in the NBA, that was the style,” Geran said. Before they began working together, Bryant wore huge Gucci suits or sweatpants, so Geran enjoyed watching him blossom and embrace fashion. Through Geran, Bryant found his style and continued to slot in a strict dress code for athletes introduced by NBA commissioner David Stern in 2005, created after the 2004 Malice within the Palace brawl.When Adam Silver became commissioner after Stern left in 2014, he gave players more freedom.

“You had to wear collared shirts, or you had to wear a suit, depending on the team, if you were traveling,” Geran said. “But all those rules are gone now. The NBA and fashion have collided. It’s a really industrial business for the players and the NBA. So that modified all the things.

“If you walked into the world before the sport in a tracksuit, you bought a $10,000 advantageous (under the old rules). Now guys wear T-shirts and skirts. They just let everyone be free. You cannot sit in press conferences with sunglasses on since you’d get an enormous advantageous. It’s crazy how much it’s evolved. I’m sure Kobe would take a look at people and think, ‘What the hell?’

Below, Geran looks back at how three of Bryant’s timeless looks got here to be.

ABC, Season 8

“Kobe was really comfortable in black because they called him the Black Mamba. I might put these sick black outfits on him because that was his energy. This is a leather jacket that I made for him. At the time, a gentleman named Eric had an organization called the Jean Shop, and everybody within the NBA would buy their custom jeans from that shop.

“That particular night, he had an event right after that. But yeah, that leather jacket, I’ve made a ton of custom leather jackets and I had to make them on the fly. I design and create and pull from different things. I was making them like crazy and that was one of them. He even talked to me about doing a leather jacket line. It never happened, but he loved the leather jackets I made for him so much.”

2010 NBA Finals, Game 2: Boston Celtics vs. Los Angeles Lakers

“It’s a Dolce & Gabbana sweater, off the rack. I used to take my sweaters to the dry cleaners and have them aired and stretched. I needed to stretch the sleeves because Kobe had 60 inches within the shoulders and 60 inches within the chest, which was very dramatic.

“All of his custom shirts (like the one he wears under his sweater) are from Anto’s of Beverly Hills. They’re legends. I had Kobe sign the cover we did so they could put it on their wall. They have Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. shirt designs in their vault. Oh my God. They’re like the best shirt makers.”

, ABC, Season 8

“It was a special moment. It was the day after they won his last championship and his fifth ring. He was wearing a Gucci jacket that was popular on the time. Justin Timberlake recently wore it in his music video. Floyd Mayweather, you’d see him in all the colours. It was called the Madonna jacket. I ordered that jacket from Italy for him.

“Sometimes I would order his stuff and just put it away for a while. It was perfect because he won the championship and all the guys were dressed like super-regular degular. That jacket was very classic and Gucci has been remaking it for years.”