How Seth Rollins Became the WWE’s Undisputed Fashion King

Back in the ’80s and ’90s, pro wrestling was teeming with big, freaky characters wearing even bigger, freakier ensembles: Think Ric Flair in his WOOOOO!-inducing furs; Macho Man Randy Savage’s floor-grazing fringe and neon-sequin cowboy hats; Bret Hart’s searing pink singlets and matching RoboCop wraparounds. At some point in the 2000s, though, the sport began to trend—from a sartorial standpoint, anyway—a little self-serious. A lot of plain dark ring gear and cool-guy leather jackets. More Oppenheimer, less Barbie.

For a long time, WWE superstar Seth Rollins fell in line with that grimmer, starker status quo. “A lot of black T-shirts and black jeans,” the 37-year-old says. But in 2021, after returning to TV from a stint on paternity leave, Rollins decided his onscreen persona needed a major shakeup. He officially changed his ring name to Seth “Freakin” Rollins, affected a Joker-esque cackle, and, with the aid of his stylist Troi Anthoni, began dressing more and more unhinged. His fashion evolution began slowly—a tie-dye suit here, a flame-covered blazer there—but then quickly took on a wildly audacious, wholly unrestrained life of its own. Long before Cillian Murphy sported the look, there was Rollins strutting to the ring in sensual sheer blouses. At both April’s WrestleMania and this month’s SummerSlam, Rollins rolled up in monstrous puffy-sleeve marvels worthy of Haute Couture Week. And fittingly enough, given his character’s sometimes troll-like persona, he was also one of the earliest adopters of MSCHF’s divisive Big Red Boots, going viral after brawling in them on WWE Raw in February.

Notably, Rollins’s OTT reign as the Drip God—as he’s rightfully taken to calling himself on occasion—has coincided with arguably the hottest streak of his career: earning Sports Illustrated’s Wrestler of the Year honors in 2022, capturing the newly minted World Heavyweight Championship in May, and causing an absolute frenzy every time he steps into the arena to his electric, endlessly beltable entrance music.

Fresh off delivering a nasty Superkick in a pair of MSCHF x Crocs boots on last week’s Raw, Rollins hopped on Zoom with GQ to talk about his ascendance as wrestling’s new menswear king.

GQ: Your onscreen wardrobe shifted dramatically about two years ago, when you added the “Freakin” to your name and started wearing insanely loud suits. How did that whole transformation come about?

Seth Rollins: Well, I had just come off paternity leave, and the character I’d been portraying before I had my child—this kind of cult-leader-esque, religious-zealot-type person—that guy was gone. I needed a new angle, something that was going to be more approachable. I looked around and we were in the ThunderDome (WWE’s bio-secure bubble during the pandemic) and there were no fans. Everything was kind of drab and quiet and soft, and I just wanted to have fun. I wanted to do something different and shake it up.

It’s very much a throwback to the era that I grew up watching wrestling, which is the late ’80s. You’ve got your Macho Mans and your Ric Flairs and guys like that who are loud and brash—or even your Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels. Their costumes were bigger and louder and crazier, and I just didn’t see that going on anymore. So (my new) character, it started with some suits and sort of just snowballed from there. The end game was always to get to where we’re at now. But I wanted to get there slow, and luckily my stylist was on board with that, so it’s been a fun transformation.

Tell me about your relationship with your stylist. What were those initial conversations like? Were you sending him references to stuff, like those Macho Man and Ric Flair costumes you just mentioned?

My wife, Becky Lynch, was using Troi as a stylist and he wanted to work with me. I figured, why not? If you’re going to do something new, you might as well go all the way. I’d never had any help previously—to be fair, I didn’t need it just wearing black jeans and black T-shirts. But now I needed help sourcing materials. I had no idea where to start, where to look, and so I enlisted the help of Troi. And really it was just the suits at first—that was my initial directive. And then we talked about going bigger.