former NFL star Michael Bennett talks taste

My personal style signifiers are my beanies. From Louis Vuitton to Acne Studios, I always have one on. Acne used to do oversized ones: on everybody else’s head they feel like pillowcases, whereas for me – because my dreads are so big – they fit perfectly.  

The last thing I bought and loved was a Lamy Dialog pen. It’s my drawing pen, my writing pen, my thinking pen. I, like, love pens. Everyone goes to Japan for fashion but I go for stationery. I have a Romeo pen case from Itoya that’s leather with suede inside. People are like, “What have you got in there, your wallet?” I’m like, “Nah, it’s my pens.” 

My interest in philanthropy comes from what I saw growing up. My grandfather built this church and people would congregate around that; my mother was a school teacher; my dad was a “community dad”, helping everybody – my brother is also a retired NFL player – get to football practice. As I got older, I always thought about others around me, and I continue to use my voice or put money towards it. Most recently I have been supporting the One Love Community Fridge in Brooklyn, which helps provide free healthy food to those in need. 

My hero is [the American educator and author] Booker T Washington – the way he thought about systems and frameworks, teaching people skills, creating schools and opportunities for knowledge. His life taught me about setting up infrastructure that outlasts the moment. Inspired by that, I launched the “Building Motions” programme that focuses on creating secular spaces in communities of colour – spaces that are sacred in their own way: the first one will open in April. It’s about creating permanence in a world that’s often trying to erase us. 

And the best souvenir I’ve brought home is a Japanese teapot from Nakatani, near the Kodaiji temple in Kyoto. I kept going back and forth, like “Man, am I going to get this teapot?” It’s ceramic with a greyish-white glaze. You can see the rawness in it, the grains of it, and it has this beautiful handmade wicker wraparound handle. But it’s a functional object. I don’t want a thing that doesn’t do a thing. 

The place that means a lot to me is Hawaii, the first place I ever felt solitude. I moved to East Honolulu in 2013 or 2014 because my wife’s [artist Pele Bennett] family lives here, and I just love it. When I was playing in the NFL it was a great place to come after the season. I’m involved in a lot of charity stuff out here: I donated $10,000 to the University of Hawai’i to provide supplies and a photobooth for design students. 

The best books I’ve read in the past year are The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda and Lover Man by Alston Anderson. The first is about getting to the best design, where it feels simple but it’s complex at the same time, doing away with what you don’t need. And Lover Man feels like an anthology, where it skips around but it all makes sense. 

A country that has inspired my work is Senegal, which I visited in 2018 as a way of connecting with the ancestral pulse that runs through my work. I partnered with iamtheCODE to create digital literacy programmes for girls, focusing on empowerment through technology and education. Those moments shaped the way I see my role – as a builder, not just for structures but for futures.

Change doesn’t start with a donation – it starts with presence, with action. If you can’t give money, give time, your voice: be visible. I’ve marched, spoken and volunteered at Palestine rallies, BLM and NFL “take a knee” protests. It’s like adding brushstrokes to a painting. Every small act creates a bigger picture. 

The podcast I’m listening to is The Institute of Black Imagination, where you get introduced to a lot of Black designers such as Sara Zewde, Kenturah Davis and Dr Mabel O Wilson. My own design practice, Studio Kër, is rooted in the forms and language of the African diaspora, spanning installations, furniture, art and architecture.  

My style icon is myself. Is that rude? I like the way I dress.

The best gift I’ve received is a tennis racket from my daughter. She knows I love Roger Federer so she bought me a Wilson Pro Staff designed by him. 

The last music I downloaded was my own album, E-Nigg-ma, which I’m dropping this year. It’s a spoken-word album. I’ve been listening to a lot of that, just working out the kinks, making sure the mastering and sonics are right. In this practice, my musical side, I’m not really worried about streams: I’m thinking about streams of consciousness and putting positivity into the world. 

If you can’t give money, give time, your voice: be visible

A cause that’s close to my heart is using design as a form of resistance. I donated $250,000 to the Rhode Island School of Design to create a scholarship fund specifically for students of colour. And I’ve been involved with Freedmen’s Town, the first Black settlement in Houston, where I grew up, supporting efforts to preserve and revitalise historic Black communities through architecture. I’m also involved with Black Folks In Design, a group that focuses on empowering Black designers and increasing representation in the industry.   

I have a collection of Maison Margiela. I call myself “Margiela Mike”. My favourite find is a washed denim outfit with wide-leg jeans and a denim jacket with sprinkled paint on it. It’s so fire. I love bags too, because I’ve always got pens and my laptop on me. My briefcase is from Porter-Yoshida & Co in Japan, and I just bought a beautiful brown Issey Miyake tote bag. 

Giving money to a good cause is the most natural, human thing to do. Throughout my body of work – whether it was while I was playing sports or after, whether I’m working with Native American tribes or in juvenile detention centres – I use this innate ability to understand the human condition and connect to that. My first philanthropic project was here in Hawaii, where I started OCEAN Health Fest, which aimed to educate the community on healthy food choices and promote fitness in families. 

In my fridge you’ll always find a nice steak, avocados, lychees and a good milk. Everybody likes almond milk and all the other ones, but I like the milk of the cow. It’s straightforward.

I’ve recently rediscovered my love for sonic jazz with no words – Yusef Lateef or Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sometimes I just want to hear beautiful sounds. 

An indulgence I would never forgo is dessert. I go to all these fancy restaurants, but it just comes down to a good chocolate cake. A hot chocolate cake with some ice-cream. Sometimes I ask them to warm it up. They get so hurt, but it would be better if it was hot! 

The last items of clothing I added to my wardrobe were a Bode corduroy suit and a pair of blue pants from Simone Rocha. 

I have a big art collection: Nick Cave, Theaster Gates, Gordon Parks, Nina Chanel Abney. The artists I want to collect now are Simone Leigh and El Anatsui, whose work resonates with me because it dives deep into themes of identity, culture, and history – ideas I try to reflect in my own work.

Men never talk about facial stuff, but the older I get the more I’m like, oh, face oil! I use Elemis Superfood Facial Oil, as well as products by True Botanicals and Humanrace. For perfume, the bottle is super-important. If they don’t have a good bottle I don’t care how good it smells. I recently bought Galop d’Hermès Parfum: the bottle is a triangle with beautiful metal casing, and then it has a metal top and an Hermès-orange leather string. Elemis Superfood Facial Oil, £54 for 15ml. Hermès Galop d’Hermès Parfum, £220 for 50ml 

My grooming and wellbeing guru is my hair lady Dii [Diehwredii Karnga at Ota International], who takes care of my dreads. Not everybody can do dreads – she has a touch that feels like a ritual. There’s a calmness, a spirituality in the way she works. It’s not just about the technique, it’s about the soul, the care she brings. She’s also a musician so she’s always playing her music; she has good energy. 

When I need to feel inspired, the first thing I do is throw on some incense and Miles Davis’s “Flamenco Sketches” or Water Babies. I’ve created a lot of things to that album: most recently I’ve been designing a secular space in Seattle. 

I don’t have an alternate-life career; I think I’m living it. After I retired from football I could have stopped and played golf every day, but I went to architecture school, interior design school, and now I’m living that life. 

The thing I couldn’t do without is my family. At the core of it all, you have the family with your parents, brothers and sisters and cousins. And then you go out in the world and make a family with somebody else, and that becomes so important that in the moments you’re not there, it feels like there’s a part of you that’s not together. Even though kids get on your goddamn nerves because they don’t always listen, at the end of the day they’re your kids and that’s a thing you can’t live without. And it’s important not to raise a serial killer. 

My favourite buildings are Tadao Ando’s buildings on Naoshima, Japan’s art island. I was mad because I just went to his Church of the Light and it was closed. I drove all the way from Kyoto to Osaka and I was like “Nooooo!”

The works of art that changed everything for me are by Anselm Kiefer. I went to Venice and I saw his exhibition Questi scritti, quando verranno bruciati, daranno finalmente un po’ di luce. It referred in part to the Holocaust, and the material, colour palette and scale changed my whole understanding of what art is supposed to do. Also Theaster Gates’ series using firehoses and Richard Serra’s work. 

I believe in life after death because I think everything has a reciprocal relationship. Life and death, light and darkness. I would like to think that after life, there’s something to think about, that this isn’t just the end. You go to funerals and you see the physical, and then you wonder where that thing went – the consciousness. I want to believe that there’s a place where consciousness exists after the flesh ceases to exist. 

On my Instagram “For You” page, I see tennis and architecture, mostly, and different hotels that I want to go and visit: Amanruya in Bodrum, Turkey and the Royal Mansour Marrakech in Morocco. I saw that Aman is doing something with Djokovic – he’s my favourite tennis player.

My favourite room in my house is probably my office. When you have a house you share a lot of space and make concessions for everybody, but my office was a good opportunity to express the design ethos that I love. I have all my furniture that I designed for Studio Kër, as well as the ceramics that I make, and it just has this diasporic way of thinking. We also did a good job of picking pieces for the living room: an orange leather couch made of separate pieces that come together, the beautiful Mo-Mo Table and one of the Pews couches that I made, an African cover and these two Japanese chairs. And then there’s this table that’s made out of one trunk of wood, which flows through the room perfectly. 

A website that I like is Common Sense Media. It’s kind of stupid, but when you have kids you want to watch the movie before you watch the movie – like, are there sexual things in the movie? Common Sense Media tells you everything. I look at it to make sure nothing pops up that we might have to have a family discussion about. 

The best bit of advice I ever received was when I was a rookie in the NFL: I was playing for Tampa Bay Bucaneers and I got the opportunity to spend some time with Ronde Barber. It was his 13th year and I was, like, “Damn, 13 years? I don’t even know if I can do this for two.” That day propelled me to stay in the NFL as long as I did – 11 seasons – because I learnt so much. His best advice was: “Show people who you are by the work that you do.” The way he approached the job helped me figure out how not to get caught up in the glitz and glamour and to keep the human experience important.