SErena Williams will receive the Fashion Icon award at the high-profile CFDA awards in New York next month in November. As a sharp dresser with her own clothing line, an honor from the fashion industry makes sense. But this is also the first time that an athlete has received this award. It’s a sign of the increasingly close bond between sport and fashion – something that will increase further in the run-up to the Paris Olympics next year, which will be sponsored by the world’s largest fashion conglomerate, LVMH.
According to a report from trend analyst Lefty, sports and fashion alliances have generated $78.5 million in earned media value (EMV) to date – the metric that measures the revenue a brand can expect from social media mentions. this year.
Major fashion houses are collaborating with athletes in unprecedented ways. When top 10 tennis player Jannik Sinner took a Gucci monogrammed bag to the court at Wimbledon, it was the first time a high-quality piece of luxury luggage was brought onto the court, according to the label. Emma Raducanu has been an ambassador for Dior since her victory at the 2021 US Open.
Stars like Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka sit front row at fashion shows for brands like Burberry. Prada outfitted the Chinese team in suits at the Women’s World Cup, and Louis Vuitton signed Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo to appear in an ad before the World Cup in late 2022. None of this surprises Gary Armstrong, editor of CircleZeroEight, a magazine focused on sports and fashion. He says designers are now realizing how important sports people can be. “They are everyone’s biggest influencers,” he says.
“They have some of the biggest followers on Instagram. They are worshiped as heroes in a very different way (compared to) a movie star or a musician.”
In Britain, football undoubtedly dominates the space. One social media account, @footballerfits, set up in 2020 by former Argos employee Jordan Clarke, documents players’ fashion looks; it now has nearly 560,000 followers on Instagram and 1.5 million followers on TikTok.
Daniel-Yaw Miller, senior editorial staffer at industry news website Business of Fashion, has noticed a new focus. “Fans feel more comfortable when players are more expressive,” he says. “Even if you still get comments from certain groups of fans who don’t want them to wear designer brands, there is definitely change.”
This is evident from stylish players such as Héctor Bellerín, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Megan Rapinoe and Leah Williamson. Bellerín walked the Louis Vuitton catwalk in 2019 and Calvert-Lewin wore a kilt on the cover of the fashion magazine Arena Homme Plus last year. Rapinoe was featured in a campaign for Loewe in 2020 and Williamson signed a deal with Gucci last year.
This is in contrast to the culture of 25 years ago, as documented in the recent David Beckham series on Netflix, which showed the footballer making headlines for wearing a sarong on holiday. “He was really ahead of his time in terms of how a man in a hyper-masculine sport would dress,” Miller says.
In 2023, football culture has had a makeover, with football shirts now a fashion item. Stella McCartney’s Arsenal women’s shirt, released in September, was worn by influencer Mia Regan and has sold out. When Lionel Messi signed for MLS team Inter Miami in July, the team’s pink Adidas jersey sold out so quickly that a brand manager New York Times that they had ‘evaporated’.
While Alex Ferguson tried to keep a young Beckham’s focus on kicking a ball, sports teams are now turning to fashion creatives to strengthen the connection with style.
Ronnie Fieg is the designer for the American streetwear brand Kith. He became creative director of the New York Knicks basketball team last year and has designed a uniform and merchandise for the team.
Crystal Palace has consultant Kenny Annan-Jonathan as creative director to oversee clothing lines and fashion collaborations. “Football teams are brands in themselves, so they want to have a brand relationship with things that are cool and that people actually want to wear,” Armstrong says.
Professional athletes, who have notoriously short careers in the field have realized that fashion is an income stream they can also pursue afterwards.
“Many of them decide to shape their personal brands from the beginning of their careers, rather than later,” says Miller. “Fashion is the perfect way to open your profile to an audience outside of sports.”
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This has led to the growth of a new micro-industry: the sports stylist, as Miller documented in a recent report. By collaborating with experts on what they wear, athletes can put themselves on brands’ radar in hopes of scoring lucrative deals. American basketball players are at the forefront of this. They are photographed in the tunnel leading to the court as @leaguefits documents their design style.
“They get to wear their own clothes to matches, so they have the freedom to really express themselves,” says stylist Algen Hamilton, who works with Premier League footballers including Reiss Nelson and Trevor Chalobah. “The rules are different from the rules in football. The Premier League is very traditional.”
The Women’s Super League, meanwhile, is a less-used market. Stylist Kiera Liberati has worked with female footballers and says there is still a long way to go before you have the fashion impact of the likes of Beckham. “A lot of the England team are still quite tomboyish and wear sports brands, but I do think this will come… At the moment, whenever we see a shoot with a female footballer, there is an English flag in the background or his they wear a football shirt.”
While football and basketball dominate the conversation, other parts of the sports-entertainment industry are hot on their heels. Troi Anthoni is a stylist who works with wrestlers – including Seth Rollins, a man who is American GQ was labeled WWE’s “undisputed fashion king” in August, thanks to his brightly colored suits and the fact that he once wore art collective MSCHF’s “big red boots,” the cartoonish footwear that has become an Internet phenomenon.
Anthoni says Rollins opens the minds of wrestling fans. “It’s like, ‘You may not know what this is because you’re wearing T-shirts and jeans and merchandise and stuff like that, but this is high fashion.’ Inspiration is spotted every week on Monday evening.”
Athletics has also “really made a huge leap forward” in fashion, Armstrong says. “There are stars on the rise, like Sha’Carri Richardson, who are bringing the personality back to the sport that I think has diminished in recent years. It will be exciting to see how that turns out.”
It will probably play out spectacularly in the coming year. In July, LVMH announced its sponsorship of Paris 2024, using its various labels for various activities. Chaumet jewelry will provide the Olympic and Paralympic medals, and Sephora makeup will be involved in events along the Olympic torch route. LVMH has also begun unveiling a group of athletes it will directly support at the Olympic Games. Names so far include swimmer Léon Marchand and gymnast Mélanie de Jesus dos Santos.
For the relationship between sports and fashion, it seems like the games have only just begun.