published on May 05, 2024 in gacor

The amazing story behind Devin Bushs draft day suit

Jatannio Grier, posted up in a tastefully appointed Nashville hotel lounge, needed a drink.

Not far from Grier’s seat at the JW Marriott, inside linebacker Devin Bush — not that he knew it — was waiting out his last few minutes as a Michigan Wolverine. Bush, in the run-up to the NFL Draft, had pushed his way into consensus top-10 status, and he had the green room real estate to prove it.

It wasn’t a matter of whether Bush would be selected in the first round. That was never much up for debate; Bush ultimately couldn’t quite close the positional gap between himself and LSU’s Devin White, but he halved it. Made enough headway, in fact, to creep into “best player in the draft” conversations, nebulous as those can be. That sort of guy does not slide out of the first round.

So, the question was how early he’d go off the board. The question was to whom. The question was whether the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose interest in Bush seemed outstripped only by their need for his bouillabaisse of sideline-to-sideline, three-down speed-demonry, would be able to find a trade-up partner they could work with, at a price they could live with.

Another question, for a not-insignificant portion of 10 million people across the country, was “What the hell is Devin Bush wearing?”

The answer is more fascinating than we could’ve imagined.

If you watched the draft, odds are good that you wondered. If you didn’t, salute — you’re further up on men’s fashion than the average football fan. Harness-inspired suits are in the midst of a moment in street wear and on red carpets. The NFL Draft, though, is not the Met Gala, or the SAG Awards.

And because it’s how things work in 2019, Bush’s look went from TV cameras to Twitter reactions, then to posts about the Twitter reactions. There was backlash, then backlash to backlash, then it receded from view. Ever thus the content business. This time, though, there was more.

At its core, it all went down because showing up on ESPN in a black suit, white harness and split-hem pants is not expected behavior. It wasn’t the standard move. And if it required a different kind of dude, in Bush, to take that look from the hanger to the podium, it took another to give him the option. Devin Bush’s suit didn’t just happen; Jatannio Grier had to create it.

This is how the biggest social-media moment of the draft came to be, courtesy of a 36-year-old designer from Charlotte with a handful of credits to his name, an aborted songwriting career, one important connection and, as of that moment at the Marriott, a single $20 bill in his pocket.

“I’m looking at the TV,” Grier told The Athletic, “and my nerves are completely shot out.”

Such are the hazards of a trip to Ann Arbor, then one to Los Angeles, then a second to Ann Arbor and another to Nashville.

To get there — the point when, at any second, an elite NFL prospect would cross the stage in his work — Grier weathered self doubt and dead ends. He weathered overdraft fees. He weathered homelessness. The cocktail menu at the Cumberland Bar — the sort of spot that sells $16 Moscow mules and $26 pours of Basil Hayden’s — wasn’t much of an obstacle. Sure, he wanted a drink. He also wanted the option to cab back to his own hotel.

“I don’t want to buy a drink and have something come up where I needed the cash. So I kept my $20 and sat there, and my anxiety was through the roof,” Grier said. “I wanted a Jack and Coke so bad.”

That $13 (plus tip) stayed in his wallet. Watching one of his dreams come true would have to do.

Before any of that, Grier was a ninth-grade dropout. The eldest of three children in a single-parent home, he didn’t finish his freshman year at West Charlotte High School. The reasons weren’t atypical or all that interesting: If you opt for smoking weed and skipping class often enough, like Grier did, that’s what can happen.

Around that time, Shelley Barrow entered his life. They were active in the same ministry, and Barrow — an actress and playwright herself — “saw a light” in Grier, he said, partially due to his interest in the arts. She was directing a play and told him to audition. It was the beginning of a two-decade-and-counting bond.

“She really took to me,” Grier said. “She said, ‘You’re better than the choices you’re making.’”

When they met, Barrow said Grier “was in the process of dropping out.” Immediately, she was willing to get tough.

“I would call him every day and say, ‘What are you doing?’ And he might be high,” Barrow said. “And I’m like, ‘What are you doing? If you do not get up and go to school — I do not deal with losers.’”

It might’ve come too late to keep Grier on track at West Charlotte, but eventually he found himself at an alternative school within the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County system. He completed three years of coursework in a year and a half, he said, and got his diploma in 2002.

Steelers linebacker Devin Bush (left) had the suit he wore for the first round of the NFL Draft created by designer Jatannio Grier. (Courtesy of Jatannio Grier)

By that point, Shelley had married Micheal Barrow, who was nine years into his own 13-year NFL career. Pregnant with their first daughter, Shelley drove down to Charlotte — Micheal, a linebacker, had moved from the Panthers to the Giants in 2000 and was in the middle of OTAs — to watch Grier graduate.

Despite living a few states north, their relationship with Grier thrived. “He became our first child, basically,” Shelley said. They now have four of their own — five if you count Grier, who called them “a second father and mother to me.” He was there when they wrote the check for the first house; later, he’d live with them in South Florida, where he asked for — and received — the privilege of overhauling their closet.

“All the stuff was color coded. He had my shoes totally organized,” Shelley said. “I was like, ‘Who does that?’

“We’ve been around so many people and so many different things and met other designers, and then he comes in and changes the whole atmosphere.”

So there were glimpses; Grier had enough of a knack for style and design to make people assume he was in the fashion industry, even when he wasn’t. Next, though, came music.

After a brief stint at a community college in South Carolina in 2002, Grier worked his way into South Carolina State, a historically black college in Orangeburg, S.C. He drove to campus to visit friends for homecoming and liked what he saw: “This is real school,” he said to himself.

That was enough motivation for him to hound the admissions office. Initially, they said he’d need to spend more time at community college before transferring. Eventually, a woman on the phone caved: “You know what, just come on. Fine.”

Grier packed his stuff and started classes there in spring 2003, taking music business courses. He stayed put until 2006 when he decided to transfer to McNally Smith, a dedicated music college in St. Paul, Minn., that has since closed. After a year of classes there — music history, administration, production — he left for Coral Gables, Fla., where he lived with the Barrows. Micheal was on staff at the University of Miami, his alma mater, as linebackers and special teams coach.

By 2009, Grier had decided to move to Atlanta for a hard run at making it as a songwriter.

“I watched him go from thing to thing to thing,” Shelley said. “I’m like, ‘OK. All right. I’ll support you.”

Steelers linebacker Devin Bush showed off the lining of his suit during the first round of the NFL Draft in Nashville on Friday. (Christopher Hanewinckel / USA Today)

He came closer than most to breaking through; there was an indie management deal with Kevin “Coach K” Lee, who’d go on to manage Migos, plenty of meetings, plenty of recording sessions. Friends have gone on to bigger things. Grier politely passed on dropping any names, saying he’s proud of them — and sounding like he means it.

“I wasn’t jealous, but you do (wonder). You do look around and say, ‘What’s wrong with me?’

“I don’t want anything that anyone else has. I want what’s for me. And that was my challenge for the universe — where’s mine? Because I saw everybody else eating, and I’m putting in the work, so where’s mine?”

Shelley didn’t have a name to drop either — but she also remembered sending him money in Atlanta.

“The next thing I know, I turn on the television and I’m like, ‘Jattanio, is that so-and-so?’ And he says, “yyyyup.’ I did that probably six or seven times. I’d turn on the Grammys and say, ‘… is that the same person?’ I watched everybody he was partnered with make it. It’s been difficult.”

Maybe more difficult, she said, for her.

“There have been so many people that I’ve called him and said, like, ‘Now, this is not the same girl I sent $90, is it?’”

By 2012, Grier had moved to Los Angeles; a trip to the BET Awards sold him on that. More meetings with major labels, more sessions — but still no break. In the meantime, those questions from strangers kept coming.

“I would go to award shows, and I would wear my designs or things that I picked out,” Grier said, “and people would just be like, ‘Hey man, you look really interesting, you look really great. Are you a stylist? Are you a designer?’

“And I would say, ‘No. Actually, I’m a songwriter.’ And they’d be like, ‘… oh.’ And their attention would drift off.”

Wardell Malloy, an executive with music publisher BMI and a close friend, told him to tweak the response.

“When someone asks you, ‘Are you a designer? Are you into fashion?’” Malloy told Grier, “you should say yes. You should go with that. People could want something from you. It could be an opportunity. Say that’s what you do, because you do it.

“You are a designer. You are a stylist. You should say that and go with that. And from that day on, it changed for me.”

He segued in 2016, and work followed — but it wasn’t glamorous. He assisted on video sets, lugged garment bags, returned clothes. He styled friends, including Malloy, for award-show appearances. A friendship with Kollin Carter, best known for styling Cardi B, helped lead to one of Grier’s first “solidifying gigs” as a stylist on a 2017 lyric video by singer Justine Skye. That was a big enough deal for Kylie Jenner and Jaden Smith to show up on set.

Still, the grind was real: “Every day is not a red carpet. So what do you do in the meantime? In the meantime, you be as creative as you can, and you do improv shooting, and you create your own editorials,” Grier said. “You shoot yourself. You shoot your friends. That’s how the work comes in. The universe brings back what you put in.”

Eventually, maybe. Immediately, no.

Throughout his time in Los Angeles, Grier maintained a 9-to-5. By 2018, he was working as an intervention specialist at UCLA. It was a good job; he had his own place, and enough free time to keep pursuing a career in fashion.

“Trying to be creative full time, and also trying to pay your bills, is crazy. And there’s so, so, so much talent and so much that you’re up against in L.A., because everybody is trying to do what you’re doing, because you have four million people trying to get one job,” he said.

“Just balancing bills and balancing your personal life and balancing creativity was overwhelming.”

In February, UCLA let him go. In short order, he lost his apartment. That kicked off a several-month stretch where he was, by the dictionary definition of the word, homeless. He couch-surfed. He showered wherever he could. Sometimes, he checked into shelters.

“There were a lot of times I just drove in my car — L.A.’s sunny, it’s beach life — so I’d go to the beach and lay out until I couldn’t lay there anymore, then sleep in my car,” he said. “It was rough.”

Eventually, he got a temp job at a downtown L.A. legal firm. “I went from UCLA to working in a copy center,” he said.

It didn’t lead to anything permanent. Out of work again, he took some of his savings and bought a plane ticket. Paris’ fall fashion week was waiting. He spent time “absorbing the beauty” of the city, hanging out on the Champs-Élysées, taking in Parisian streetwear culture. He made it into a show, by American designer Rick Owens.

Then, it was over. After a few weeks back in Los Angeles, he headed for Charlotte, “ready to throw in the towel.”

Grier moved back in with his family. The Barrows were waiting for him, too — and they had advice.

“I was like ‘Hey, this is not working for me. Maybe I just need to focus on getting a 9-to-5,’” Grier said.

“And Micheal, he just beat me in the head one day with so much love and support and encouragement and said, ‘No, you’re not a 9-to-5 guy. You’re totally creative, and you need to do this full time. You need to keep pursuing this. I know that it’s taken you a lot of time, but it’s gonna pay off, and you need to keep doing it.’”

Shelley Barrow remembers her husband’s reaction differently: “‘Time out from the pity party. Don’t call me back until you’re serious.’ Micheal had never come at him that hard since we’ve known him,” she said.

Eventually, Grier got serious enough for Barrow to connect him with Rosenhaus Sports president Robert Bailey. A longtime NFL cornerback and kick returner, and a teammate of Barrow’s at Miami, Bailey agreed to give Grier a shot at styling some of his agency’s top draft prospects — but not without hesitation.

“How are you gonna do this?” Bailey said to Grier. “It’s kind of late in the game. Because I don’t want any bullshit. I don’t want my players to have to go through any stress. Do you believe you can execute this?”

“I’m damn sure that I can execute this,” Grier said. Damn sure enough, actually, to work for free. Two other players eventually opted out of having clothes designed specifically for them. Not Bush.

“Once I met Devin, it was just uphill from there,” Grier said. “It was a great vibe.”

In March, for the first time in his life, Grier flew to Michigan. He met Bush — and his father, Devin Sr. — at a tailor shop in Ann Arbor to record their measurements. They talked about color palettes, traded ideas, vibed off each other; it went as well as it could’ve. Grier came away from the day taken with Devin Jr.’s “far out, unconventional, rock star” personality, and he wanted to weave that into the final product. The original plan was to design one suit for each Bush; Grier decided to go “over and above.” Junior would get three; Senior would get two.

From there, Grier flew back to Los Angeles. It was time, yet again, to crash with friends. He was working with a tailor and, he thought, a suit company that would supply the fabric free of charge.

That fell through. It didn’t matter.

“I had to execute,” Grier said. “I couldn’t call (Bailey) back and be like, ‘Hey, my guy didn’t come through.’”

Designer Jatannio Grier created a suit for Steelers linebacker Devin Bush to wear during the first round of the NFL Draft in Nashville on Friday. (Courtesy of Jatannio Grier)

That meant taking more of his savings, augmented by “unemployment from the great State of California” and at times skipping meals, and buying the fabric himself.

You paid for fabric for five suits?

“Five suits.”

So …

“So I have no more money. I couldn’t not execute. I was given an opportunity, I couldn’t say, ‘The suit guys, they backed out on me.’ Fuck it. I had to get it done.”

By early April, Grier was back in Ann Arbor, completed outfits in tow. Nice as that might’ve been, he couldn’t use them as a down payment on a hotel room.

“I had to call family and friends to get more money for a hotel. It was rough,” he said. “I slept in the car one night because I couldn’t get money fast enough to get a hotel, and my account was overdrafted.”

The next step was finding a spot for the final fitting. Grier called the aesthetics of the tailor shop “a no-go.” Hotels with the right sort of complimentary spaces weren’t interested in lending them to a guy staying at a Hampton Inn. So, Grier went for broke. He called the University of Michigan Museum of Art — and they said yes. After operating hours, the doors would open. They told Grier they’d never hosted anything like that, but they were game.

“Sometimes I don’t have the practical, logical steps, but I go from A to Z,” Grier said. “I’ll skip the rest of the alphabet.”

An hour on the second-floor mezzanine of one the country’s largest university art museums turned into three. Grier put speakers and full-length mirrors next to Picassos. Everyone danced along the corridors. This time, the aesthetics were right — and it was time to make a choice.

Devin Jr.’s options were a “classic, clean, simple” tan look with an extended lapel; a light gray jacket with a satin sash across the chest; and, then, Door No. 3.

Bush looked at the rack. “What is that?” Grier told him to keep an open mind: “I’m open,” Bush said. “Let’s go. This is the one.”

It was Grier’s choice, too.

“It takes a strong personality and a strong-willed person to go against the grain and do something unconventional. Devin was the guy,” he said. “I’m like that myself — I dress eclectic and I march to the beat of my own drum. It was just so divine that Devin does the same thing.

“It wasn’t that we were trying to be different. We are different. Devin was just being himself. People who know Devin know that’s who he is. It wasn’t that we were trying to go for shock value. We thought it was tasteful and fashion-forward. We knew that people wouldn’t get it, and we didn’t care.”

That’s a necessary mindset for any fashion designer, and doubly so for one outfitting an NFL player in a Louis Vuitton-inspired high-fashion harness; Michael B. Jordan and Timothee Chalamet strapping up for red carpets is one thing. A top-10 pick in one of earth’s most tradition-bound sports is something else entirely.

Given Bush’s atypical background — his height, his haircut, his decision to stomp on the Michigan State logo at midfield last season — all the pieces fit.

“One thing is for sure about Devin,” said Stanford Samuels Jr., his high school coach. “He’s going to follow his own path. If he likes it and he feels like it’s what needs to happen, that’s what’s going to happen.”

Then, Samuels laughed about the suit.

“I wasn’t surprised.”

Grier was less diplomatic.

“He does not give a fuck about what people say, because he’s been called too little, undersized, he’s had everybody speak against him and look — he’s top 10. His jersey is No. 10, and he’s a top-10 pick. That’s divine. He does not care what anyone thinks,” Grier said.

“And that’s why it was such a good mesh of energy to work with him, because I feel the same. He went with the least conventional, the most nonconforming suit that I had. He said, ‘This is the one, nobody else is gonna have this on. Nobody is gonna think of this. And this is the one I want to wear.’”

So, Grier and Bush — both underdogs in their own way — knew what they were doing. From the jump, they were out to defy convention; one of Bush’s final requests was that Grier stitch “UNDRSZD” into the coat’s lining. In a text sent Friday morning, Bush called Grier’s work “heaven sent.” Grier said Bush “set the tone” for breaking conformity.

“Some people like it and some people don’t, but the right person liked it. Devin was enthusiastic about it. And his mother, his father, his family, his friends, they loved it. And that’s all that really mattered to me. He felt confident. He felt that it was his moment. And he felt great. He exuded so much confidence and energy in that suit. He owned it. And I was so proud.”

Shelley Barrow felt the same swell — just not for Bush. While Grier watched his work stride down a hotel hallway and into video clips, guaranteed to be revisited for as long as people care about the NFL Draft, she was reflecting on a couple of things.

One: That suit sat in her living room a few days earlier. She and the family recently moved back to Charlotte, and Grier had it shipped to their home for safekeeping. He asked where to have it dry cleaned; she told him to search Yelp for “high-end cleaners” and go with the highest rating.

Two: Her “first child” is getting the breaks she prayed for.

“He’s finally stepping out on his own, and I’m proud of him and I’m happy for him,” Barrow said.

By the Monday after the draft — he’d flown on a buddy pass and slept in the airport on Sunday night — Grier was back in Charlotte, planning his next move. He’s headed to New York for the NBA Draft on June 20. He often talks about “the universe bringing back what you put in.” Specifically, he’s hoping for contact info for top prospect Ja Morant, but he’ll take what he can get. A Met Gala down the road would be nice. Smaller steps would work, too.

“I just hope that my phone rings and somebody wants to work with me, and I get paid,” he said. “I just feel like life for me after this won’t be the same.”

Next time, maybe he can have that Jack and Coke.

(Top photo: Steve Helber / Associated Press)

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