Last night, Coco Jones embodied the phrase “rooting for everybody Black,” stepping onto the Super Bowl stage draped in all white. While delivering a stunning rendition of the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” Jones not only honored the poem-turned-song written by leader James Weldon Johnson, but also a particular Black icon who took the stage before her: Whitney Houston.
For her performance, Jones paid homage to the “I Will Always Love You” singer through a custom piece designed by Karl Kani. Inspired by Houston’s 1991 white tracksuit, 28-year-old Jones adorned the field stage in an all-white skirt set that married glamour and streetwear.
“I’m overwhelmed,” Kani told Essence. “They could have gone to any designer in the world—Gucci, Fendi, Prada. But they came to Karl Kani. To pay homage to streetwear and to a brand that meant everything to me, that’s something special… [Jones look] kept that athletic feeling but elevated it into something elegant and dramatic.”
Kani, a pioneer in streetwear and hip-hop fashion, worked with creative director Sankara Turé, and Jones’ stylist Vance Gamble to craft a look that honored Houston’s iconic moment and Jones’ personal style. The result was a sculpted, cropped track jacket paired with a billowing high-low bubble skirt adorned with black, red, and green accents, an intentional nod to the Pan-African flag. Gamble styled the look with a white pair of Brandon Blackwood’s “Paloma” sneaker heels and, of course, a white headband, as Houston wore during her moment 35 years ago.
However, the homage did not stop there. Behind Jones, an orchestra sat dressed in all-white tracksuits, echoing the sonic grandeur of Houston’s performance while flipping its visual language. Where Houston’s 1991 orchestra wore traditional black suits, Kani’s custom tracksuits, which featured bedazzled patches of the Pan-African flag, paired with black-and-white Nike Cortez sneakers, paid tribute to classic streetwear culture.
“We wanted to create a timeless rendition to pay homage to her,” Turé told Blex Media. “So we kept the orchestra classic — all the way down to the Nike Cortez — and then we made Coco’s look more elaborate.”
Like Kani and Turé, Jones felt the gravity of the moment. Beyond the more than 70,000 fans in attendance and the millions watching at home, the performance marked a full-circle milestone. At just nine years old, Jones once sang the national anthem at an NFL game. Fast forward, 18 years later, Jones’ appearance on the Super Bowl stage felt deeply personal.
“This is a very full circle moment for me to have done my first crowd of this magnitude at nine years old and to continue to fight, to be in these rooms, I hope that my younger self is proud of me. I’m grateful to my family. who was on that first field with me,” she told Entertainment Tonight following the performance.
“Something that I like to do to really understand the gravity of what I’m doing and what I’m representing is to look at the history of how ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ even came into fruition,” she shared in a separate interview leading up to the big day, per The Athletic. “I think also for me, being able to have this light on the culture is a moment in itself. I’m just the vessel that is able to represent what this means to the culture.”
Now, while you may not be able to shop Jones’ skirt set, fans can shop similar tracksuits designed by Kani on karlkani.com.
