A$AP Rocky and the new rules of courtroom fashion
After a three week trial, A$AP Rocky was found not guilty. But the high fashion suits he wore throughout the proceedings caused quite the stir. He even got a new job out of it as the creative director of Ray-Ban
By 
AS YOU NOW KNOW, (surely?!) A$AP Rocky, born Rakim Mayers, was found not guilty of firing a gun at his one-time friend, Terrell Ephron, aka A$AP Relli, during an altercation outside of a Hollywood hotel in 2021. On the final day of his trial on Tuesday, the rapper and fashion extraordinaire was acquitted of the two felony counts of assault with a semiautomatic firearm; he faced more than 24 years in prison if convicted. As the jury deliberated for more than three hours in a case that threatened to derail his career, upon hearing the verdict, he dove towards the gallery and into the arms of his longtime partner, the superstar singer and businesswoman Rihanna.
Throughout it all, attending the trial at the Los Angeles County Superior Court since January 24, Rocky seemed unruffled. On his way to court over the trial’s three weeks, he would walk from his black SUV, his bodyguard trailing quickly behind him, looking calm and composed.
But it was his fits that implied the most confidence. Wearing boxy, hard shouldered suits, silk ties, crisp shirts, spit-shined derbies, and blacked-out sunglasses, Rocky looked as if he stepped right out of his Bottega Veneta paparazzi walk campaign. As he’s accustomed to, there was the usual scene of assembled press capturing the same images of the 36-year-old we’ve come to know and fawn over; wading through a crowd to his front row seat at a runway show in Paris, or walking New York streets to date-night dinner with Rihanna. But this time, he was headed to court.
Along with body language analysts and lip-readers on TikTok, celebrity court style has become another vehicle for armchair experts to deliberate over one’s innocence or guilt in the court of law. In 2002, we interpreted the ‘little old me?’ Marc Jacobs trompe-l’oiel bow dress that Winona Ryder wore to her Marc Jacobs shoplifting trial as a ‘fuck you’. Anna Sorokin, the New York Soho grifter, pulled demure bows and lace, and was even allowed to wear a choker but denied stilettos during her trial in 2019 to keep up her fake Anna Delvey persona. Or more recently, how the actress and wellness-guru Gwenyth Paltrow, in her neutral symphony of quiet luxury courture, dressed like and endeared the wealthy residents of Park City, Utah, where her ski trial took place. It was her best performance in years. There are varied approaches to getting dressed for court to project certain narratives, yet for a celebrity, it doesn’t take going to court to understand that you’re being judged.
Naturally, the same reflex to dissect the semiotics of Rocky’s court wardrobe choices hung over the media for the nearly month-long trial. But to do so, to glamorise it, would take away from the severity of a case involving a firearm. And the public was always going to be (understandably) quick to call this out. Case in point: the comments left on a photo posted to the Esquire US Instagram on February 5, with the caption: “We’re just getting word that in addition to two counts of assault with a semi-automatic firearm, A$AP Rocky has been charged with looking entirely too fucking cool at court, a misdemeanour.”
Were the stakes lower – like an accident in a sport for the one per cent, or Justin Timberlake’s world tour-ruining DUI, and the instantly meme-able double-strand pearl mugshot from last September – coverage of Rocky’s suits would’ve been treated like another one of his fashion week appearances. And if part of our fascination with celebrities hinges on their being aspirational yet unknowable figures, Rocky, in his way, played to the good graces his popularity affords. His influence in the fashion world arguably eclipses his discography; the argument stands that this is just how Rocky dresses.
What makes these images feel so familiar, is the fact we’ve seen them hundreds of times before. He may be a musician first and foremost, but Rocky understands the power of an image. In its most meta-form, those paparazzi-like images of Rocky – running in a grey sweat suit, crossing the street in double denim and a tie, or walking to work in a suit and shorts with trainers, coffee cup in hand – were part of that Bottega Veneta campaign. You wouldn’t know it save for the logo. On a now deleted Instagram post, Rocky wrote of the campaign, “Throughout history, there has always been a funny relationship between photographers and celebrities.”
During the trial, clothes were his public defence. On the first day, Rocky appeared in a slim double-breasted grey suit, his face behind a surgical mask. Soon enough, he started adding on. He wore a trench coat with its belt tied urgently around his waist; a single-breasted trench from Burberry had his initials stitched in red. Another day, he wore a heavy black wool coat with broad shoulder pads layered over a navy suit; a suit with wide gauged pinstripes and wiry glasses in what would’ve been called ‘office siren’; a boxy grey suit with a red tie made him look like an ’80s Wall Street power broker. Another instance saw him tie a silk scarf into a jaunty bow that burst out of his charcoal double-breasted suit. His respect for the situation at hand was never questioned.
Rocky worked with longtime stylist Matthew Henson, whom he mostly enlists for editorial styling, to pull some-dozen suits together for the trial. Some of them were from Saint Laurent creative director Anthony Vaccarello’s autumn/winter 2025 collection, which showed just last month in Paris. Along with several appearances with Rihanna by his side, Rocky’s Ray-Bans, a key collaborator, were also unwavering. Later in the week, Ray-Ban announced Rocky as the sunglass brand’s first creative director, promoting the news with photos of him wearing the shades he wore to trial.
In lower stakes cases, like Paltrow’s or Ryder’s, it’s hard not to be curious about the particulars of celebrity court wardrobes; to gauge the extent of which the celebs themselves believe their own narrative. In this regard, celebrities often fall into tropes when getting dressed for court, turning it into another performance. Innocence becomes immaterial for those of us watching it unfold on our screens. But what Rocky wanted to project was who he was all along. So, naturally, he just chose the best clothes to do it in.
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