<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"  When you get a chance to talk to Dwyane Wade about style, you don&amp;#039;t pass it up. Right at the top of the NBA fashion heap along with fellow Miami Heat Big 3-ers LeBron and Bosh, the man clearly knows what he&amp;#039;s doing. So when we heard he teamed up with Dove Men+Care for their Real Moments campaign, we jumped at the opportunity to talk to him about this new media partnership \u2014 and then we proceeded to pick his brain about everything from his new line of shoes to sartorial risk-taking to the legacy of self-confidence he hopes to pass on to his own kids. Read on for his thoughts \u2014 plus his picks for the best-dressed up-and-comers in the league. Esquire.com: So tell us about why you decided to hook up with Dove and what you guys are doing. Dwyane Wade: It was just the perfect opportunity for me, with this Dove Men+Care Real Moments campaign, to show what matters to me most off the court. To showcase me and my kids and our relationship along with a brand I respect and a product I love. I&amp;#039;m excited, and my kids are excited. ESQ: Sounds like a very good fit. You recently made a big shift with the shoe thing, starting up a relationship with Chinese brand Li-Ning after leaving Jordan, and I was curious about that. DW: I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be a part of something that I can call my own and I just had a great opportunity to really kind of create my own brand. I&amp;#039;m having fun with it. It&amp;#039;s been good. It&amp;#039;s been challenging, but it&amp;#039;s been fun as well. ESQ: What&amp;#039;s the biggest lesson you&amp;#039;ve learned since starting off? Because you&amp;#039;re playing a big role with the design, right? DW: With our designers \u2014 we have a shoe designer at Li-Ning and then also we teamed up with Alejandro Ingelmo, and then myself. We&amp;#039;re kind of putting all our brands together and I&amp;#039;m finding what speaks to me and also what consumers want to see. What I&amp;#039;ve learned most about it is how long it takes. You don&amp;#039;t know how long it takes to curate a shoe from top to bottom \u2014 all the things that go into it. ESQ: And have you been getting late-night phone calls or getting chased down in parking lots by Michael Jordan since cutting ties with Jordan?  DW: No, not at all. [Laughs.] I have so much respect for him. And when we left, we left on good terms with the brand. After the 2, 3 years that I had with them, I wish them nothing but the best. I&amp;#039;m just trying to do what he did, building my own brand with my legacy.  ESQ: Right. Well that&amp;#039;s good to hear. So is there anything that you&amp;#039;re going to be releasing with Li-Ning that you&amp;#039;re particularly excited about?  DW: I&amp;#039;m excited for my shoes to come to the States. I think the response has been great. Obviously this year we came into it not knowing what the response would be, and we were hoping to build just a little bit of a following \u2014 and I think that we did that. And now with that, we have the possibility of bringing shoes to the States, hopefully sooner than later. I just want to make sure everything is ready for when they do come. You get one first impression, and this is our impression, you know, me with Li-Ning. I&amp;#039;m looking forward to hearing what people think and feel about the sneakers.   Wade with his kids for Dove Men+ Care&amp;#039;s Real Moments campaign  ESQ: You and LeBron and Bosh are well-known as the three fashion power-players on the Heat and I was wondering: Do you guys kind of compete for Best Dressed of the Evening on any given day? Do you pay attention to what the other guy&amp;#039;s wearing or try to outdo him a little bit?  DW: Not really, man. I think we all have our own style, you know? We don&amp;#039;t really dress alike; we do things differently. If someone wears something you like, you make comments on it. And if someone wears something we don&amp;#039;t like, we make comments on it, too. That&amp;#039;s just what guys do, what teammates do. Besides that, we don&amp;#039;t really compete in that space.  ESQ: Do you think you&amp;#039;re kind of beating those other guys out, or are you all vying for top spot?  DW: Nah, I don&amp;#039;t know. You let the masses say what they feel about it. I&amp;#039;m just showing my personality in my clothing. And I take a few more chances than those other guys. They&amp;#039;ll tell you that: I&amp;#039;ve been taking more chances.  ESQ: Is there anybody else in the league who&amp;#039;s making a run on you guys the unofficial title of Most Stylish in the NBA?  DW: The other two guys who I kind of like what I see are Tyson Chandler of the Knicks and Russell Westbrook. Because their styles are their own, and you can tell it&amp;#039;s something they&amp;#039;re comfortable with.  ESQ: You&amp;#039;re an author, and last year you released your book, A Father First. Fatherhood changed your life completely, I know, but I was wondering if fatherhood changed the way you approach getting dressed?  DW: Not really. But I&amp;#039;m always telling my kids to be themselves and let their personalities show in other ways than with their mouths. [Laughs.] And with the way I dress, I think my personality shows, so I don&amp;#039;t always have to talk. Someone can see what I&amp;#039;m wearing, see what socks I&amp;#039;m wearing, and see what my vibe is, what kind of person I am.  Mark Jones  ESQ: So you&amp;#039;re trying to instill that kind of self-expression in your kids? Is that the legacy you want to pass onto them from a style perspective?  DW: Yeah, I want them to be comfortable in who they are. See, wherever you go, things change you. I mean, obviously moving to Miami and becoming part of the NBA has given me a different perspective on style than I had when I lived in Chicago or Milwaukee. You know, places you go in life \u2014 it opens your eyes up and you kind of understand who you are. I&amp;#039;m just trying to allow them to do that. They have an opportunity to go many places and do many great things. So they&amp;#039;re going to find themselves and find what works for them, and I want to let them know they can explore it. ESQ: Kids are notoriously unafraid of making bold moves with their clothes. Is there any time you&amp;#039;ve seen them and thought, &amp;quot;Alright. Maybe I&amp;#039;ll adopt that for myself.&amp;quot; DW: Not really. I mean \u2014 my nephew lives with us, and he&amp;#039;s probably the one who&amp;#039;s a bit more chancy than my sons because he loves color. But he does it all. I do color, but I&amp;#039;ll do pink pants. He does pink pants, pink shirt, pink socks, pink shoes. [Both laugh.] He&amp;#039;s crazy with the color. But I like to see what they go with. When I say, &amp;quot;OK, you pick out your outfit tonight for where we&amp;#039;re going,&amp;quot; it&amp;#039;s just fun to see what they come out of the closet in, what they go to. Like my little son, Zion, if he can pick pink pants, he&amp;#039;ll pick &amp;#039;em to wear every day. It&amp;#039;s his favorite. ESQ: Time for a little style advice. Anything you&amp;#039;ve learned along the way that&amp;#039;s changed your approach or helped you out?  DW: I think the biggest thing I&amp;#039;ve learned is to not really worry what people will say or think about what you wear. You have to wear what feels good on you, what you feel comfortable in. And I&amp;#039;ve just learned to not really care. Obviously, from time to time, people are going to say good things about you and they&amp;#039;re going to say bad things about you, but that&amp;#039;s with anything in life and that&amp;#039;s with anything you wear. With fashion, man \u2014 fashion&amp;#039;s about taking chances, it&amp;#039;s about taking risks, and just doing it the way you feel comfortable doing it. If you do that, people will respect it more.  ESQ: Just being confident in the choices that you make.  DW: That&amp;#039;s the way of Wade. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/style/mens-fashion/interviews/a20705/dwyane-wade-interview-031913/>