By Oscar Holland, CNN
(CNN) — Bad Bunny’s style has always defied expectations. So, amid intense speculation that he would use his Super Bowl outfit to subvert masculine stereotypes, stage a protest or publicly lambast ICE (again), it was perhaps no surprise that he did precisely none of those things.
This was a jubilant celebration of culture and music, not a searing piece of social commentary. The Puerto Rican rapper teased as much at Apple Music’s halftime show press conference on Thursday, when he said that “people only have to worry about dancing.” Bookmakers were, nonetheless, taking bets on whether he’d wear a skirt, or even a ballgown, until the moment he took the stage.
In the end, however, Bad Bunny simply did what he’s best at: being impeccably well-dressed. Anything more flamboyant might have been an unwelcome distraction. The real surprise was that he turned to fast fashion retailer Zara for his outfits, rather than one of the many luxury labels for whom this would have represented a major coup. Just last week he arrived at the Grammys wearing couture label Schiaparelli’s first foray into menswear.
Emerging to the 2022 hit “Tití Me Preguntó,” football in hand, he began the halftime show as he would end it, in head-to-toe white. His collared shirt and necktie peeked out from beneath a custom faux football jersey that faintly bared his family name, Ocasio, and the number 64, which immediately sparked fan theories on what it might represent. The legs of his spotless chinos rested perfectly atop a pair of his Adidas BadBo 1.0 sneakers (what bigger stage to unveil the new collaboration’s cream colorway?).
Lady Gaga’s guest interlude presented the perfect chance for a costume change. But he instead stuck steadfastly to the theme, reappearing in a double-breasted cream blazer — a wardrobe switch so subtle that many viewers will have missed it entirely. Ricky Martin followed suit, albeit with significantly more chest on display, in a loosely tailored all-white ensemble.
Known for combining high fashion with streetwear, Bad Bunny has a reputation for adventurous and subversive style. He often uses outfits to make a point, whether arriving at the Met Gala with a 26-foot-long floral train or wearing a skirt on “The Tonight Show” to draw attention to the murder of a homeless transgender woman. But the Super Bowl is a broad church, and this was, by design, an evening on which clothes didn’t do the talking.
The primary message here was one of love and unity, told through the rapper’s rallying cry of “God bless America,” which he followed by shouting out the names of countries across the Americas. At the end of the performance, he held out the same football he’d arrived on stage with, the words “Together We Are America” stamped across it showing.
The production wardrobe still found plenty of ways to pay homage to Puerto Rico — a recurring theme of Bad Bunny’s fashion — with performers wearing the island’s traditional “pava” straw hats and the colors of the Puerto Rican flag. Lady Gaga, meanwhile, sported a blue flamenco dress adorned with a brooch modeled on Puerto Rico’s national flower, the Flor de Maga.
And beyond fashion, the set was dripping with symbolism, from sugar canes evoking the island’s colonial past to power lines speaking to its unreliable infrastructure (the latter were climbed by dancers during a rendition of “El Apagón,” or “The Power Outage”). Yet, the iconography was primarily one of pride, not protest.
Fashion icons know when to use their own backs to make a statement, and when to bow to the occasion. In that sense, Bad Bunny’s par