Anyone who lives in Los Angeles recognizes it: the offset, block-serif logo of the LA Dodgers or the italicized Bodoni-style font used for the Lakers. So perhaps it was a bit of a surprise for some locals to see them used in the service of Spencer Pratt, the reality star who’s running for mayor of Los Angeles.

Pratt, who first came to fame some 20 years ago as a villainous character in the MTV show The Hills, is now a sudden insurgent force in the city’s heated mayoral race. He was galvanized into action when his Pacific Palisades home burned to the ground during last year’s fires, and he has made inroads in a Trumpian fashion, whipping the simmering rage of a frustrated populace into a frenzied campaign despite relatively inchoate policy proposals. And like the sitting president, he’s leveraged reality-TV fame into a growing movement with little political experience.

In the process, however, he’s savvily been leveraging the rich iconography of the city and state: wearing Southern California shoe favorite Vans with his boxy suits—as he did in a sit-down interview with Elex Michaelson on CNN—or brimmed caps emblazoned with “Pratt” across the front, in the Lakers’ stylized script or with the a replaced by that recognizable Dodgers logo.

“Fashion has always been political,” says María Cabrera Arús, a sociologist and faculty member at NYU Gallatin who studies the politics of fashion and material culture and has written a forthcoming book on the subject. “It signals power, status, class, and gender. And as material culture and fashion studies have shown, appearances don’t just reflect politics—they construct it.”

With his clothing choices, Pratt conveys two things: his desire to be seen as a political outsider and as an avatar of California—specifically, Los Angeles.

The current primary is scheduled for June 2. If no candidate wins 50% of the vote, the election goes to a runoff in November. Pratt’s two biggest opponents are Karen Bass, the current Democratic mayor, who came under fire for being out of the country as the catastrophic wildfires broke out last year, and Nithya Raman, a democratic socialist who serves on the city council. A sign that, despite his thin record, Pratt is striking a nerve is that he raised more in campaign contributions than both Raman and Bass in the latest reporting period.

Historically, Cabrera Arús notes, political fashion was used mostly in two ways: to project authority, status, and unity (think all those men in their homogenous suits) and as branding (à la Trump’s blazing red MAGA hats). “What makes the Pratt case interesting,” she says, “is that his choices seem to be doing something hybrid. On the one hand, the suits and formalwear read as an attempt to close the distance between himself and the political establishment he seeks to win over. Coming from reality television, dressing up conveys belonging.” She mentions how New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist outsider, dressed his revolutionary messaging in innocuous tailoring to create a visual connection with familiar City Hall leaders.

“On the other hand,” she continued, “the Lakers and Dodgers logos, the Vans, the caps come closer to Trump’s playbook. These are lifestyle tokens that denote Los Angeles, street culture, the people’s teams. They convey belonging, not to the establishment but to the people. The result is a combination of Mamdani’s legitimacy-seeking formalism and Trump’s populist symbolism—a candidate trying to look like an insider, a local, and a people’s advocate at the same time.”

Andrew Weitz, a Los Angeles–based image consultant and men’s stylist, says that “from an executive style strategist’s perspective, Spencer Pratt’s style feels very intentional. The suits with Vans are meant to balance authority with relatability. The tailoring says, ‘I’m serious,’ while the Vans keep him connected to LA skate and street culture and make him feel less polished and political.”

“The hats do the same thing,” he added. “They feel more like lifestyle branding than campaign merchandise, which is smart in today’s attention economy.”

There’s precedent in the political sphere, from Jimmy Carter’s avuncular cardigans to Ronald Reagan’s cowboy cosplay. More recent examples include John Fetterman’s schlubcore and Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner’s rugged workwear, both of which speak to their blue-collar personas. (Cabrera Arús added Fidel Castro, son of a wealthy landowner who cemented his revolutionary persona with his military fatigues, to the bunch.) Though less folksy than those models, Pratt’s look, too, sets him apart from the political machine that he disdains. Any Angeleno will recognize the laid-back, skate/surf-inflected affectations that Pratt embodies as a common uniform of the area. It’s part off-duty dad, part beach bum. As Weitz says: “He’s not dressing like a traditional politician—he’s dressing like Los Angeles.”

Pratt’s use of local sports team emblems—which, SFGate has noted, likely qualifies as trademark infringement—can be read most of all as a way for him not to identify with a particular political party but with the city and state itself. Pratt recently revealed that he’s a registered Republican, but he has kept a distance from the MAGA movement, despite Trump recently expressing his support. He is running as an independent, and his stated policies include vague notions of disaster preparedness, fiscal reform, and the housing crisis. At times, he seems more animated by revenge on Mayor Bass than anything else; he has recently shared AI-generated ads attacking her. His message is clear—that he is not part of the establishment and that his loyalty lies with the city—and his LA-affiliated merch serves as a visual reinforcement of that point.

Pratt’s run has shaken the traditionally Democratic stronghold. While Los Angeles may be, indeed, in a moment of flux, he hardly seems like the right choice to lead the country’s second-biggest city through it. More crucially, he has a checkered history that includes deflecting connections to conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and making unverifiable claims (which have been covered extensively by, of all outlets, TMZ). Jimmy Kimmel may have said it best on his show last night: “Spencer Pratt, right now, his job is selling healing crystals on a website called PrattDaddy.com. That alone should be disqualifying. And yet he’s polling in second place.”

Perhaps his unpreparedness for the task at hand is also represented in his clothing choices. “The execution isn’t always there,” notes Weitz, who often works with business executives. “Some of the suits look ill fitting and could use proper tailoring attention. The proportions and fit occasionally undermine the message he’s trying to send.”

“The risk is that the look can also undermine seriousness,” he added. “Some voters will see modern outsider. Others will just see reality TV guy playing dress-up. In politics, perception is reality—and right now he’s walking a very fine line between relatable and credible.”

Regardless, with his background in reality TV and a campaign built on social media virality, one thing is clear: Pratt understands the value of creating a lasting, legible image. He’s been able to use clothes to reframe himself as something of a folk hero, a revolutionary voice to shake up the current system and act as a change agent. But can Pratt—with no real political experience but a strange charisma—turn a logo’d hat into a political movement? He certainly wouldn’t be the first.