For These Female Athletes, Dressing Well Is a Marketing Tool
For any woman athlete, showcasing head-turning off-court fashion isn’t just a way to gain Instagram likes; it’s a chance at a much-needed endorsement deal from a major athletic brand.
Venus Williams was sadly stating the obvious during her speech at the 2024 ESPY Awards earlier this year when she encouraged the crowd to “enjoy women’s sports” before adding this deadpan kicker: “because they are sports.”
Still, it bears reminding that we are living in the most exciting time for women’s sports since Billie Jean King successfully campaigned for equal prize money at the US Open in 1973.
The evidence? Women’s soccer team Angel City FC just broke records for becoming, at $250M, the highest-valued women’s sports team.
Group M, one of the world’s largest advertising buying agencies and whose clients include Google and Unilever, announced that it would double the ad spend allocated to women’s sports. Dior named 15 women Olympians (including U.S. soccer player Alex Morgan and Japanese fencer Misaki Emura) and Paralympians (including Italian fencers Beatrice “Bebe” Vio Grandis, Andreea Mogos and Loredana Trigilia) as brand ambassadors. And speaking of the Olympics, this year’s Paris Games were the first — ever — to have an equal number of men and women competing.
One particular sport receiving its (long overdue) time in the spotlight is women’s basketball. The Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) announced its first Canadian team (Toronto) in the spring of 2024. Indiana Fever guard and overall number-one draft pick Caitlin Clark won over countless new fans with her charming SNL appearance and record-breaking plays. Talk about momentum. And while the WNBA still has a lot of work to do before it achieves pay parity for its members (Clark was infamously given a rookie salary of just over US$76,000, and many of her fellow players resort to working second jobs to make ends meet), there is one area that’s rapidly catching up to — if not outpacing — the boys: off-court fashion.
“Certain WNBA players have been really turning out outfits lately,” says Robyn Pearson, social media manager at The Gist, a popular online sports media brand that covers men’s and women’s sports equally. “I’ve been noticing a lot more men’s fashion reporters, especially online and on social media, making compilations and commenting on these women’s outfits in ways they never have before,” she adds, referencing accounts like LeagueFits, an Instagram page that grew to one million followers for its posts of what NBA players wear to walk between the locker room and the court. Known as “the tunnel,” this walkway might as well be a fashion runway for the athletically gifted over-six-feet-tall set.
But for any woman athlete — basketball or otherwise — dressing well isn’t just a way to gain Instagram likes; it’s a chance at a much-needed endorsement deal from a major athletic brand, one that can at least begin to close the pay gap and allow a player to focus on her sport.
Pearson name-checks WNBA players, like Los Angeles Sparks forward Cameron Brink and her edgy-yet-preppy looks featuring plenty of cut-outs and graphic shapes, Seattle Storm rookie Nika Mühl’s deft styling of pleated skirts and crop tops and Las Vegas Aces centre A’ja Wilson’s edgy and experimental glamour. Wilson’s style and on-court prowess has even led to her very own signature shoe with Nike named the “A’One.”
Skylar Diggins-Smith, a WNBA player with the Seattle Storm, is signed to Puma. Pearson gives her fashion credit for “putting things together in a way that shouldn’t work but somehow does.” Namely: pairing a robo-futuristic Puma T-shirt with a pair of red slingback heels, a top-handle leather bag and perfectly tailored pinstriped trousers. To put it mildly, her tunnel looks might just make the street style at fashion week feel pedestrian.
“For a long time, endorsement deals weren’t happening for a lot of women,” says basketball star Kayla Alexander, who hails from Milton, Ont., and was a member of Team Canada’s Olympic women’s basketball team at the Tokyo Games in 2020 and the recent Paris Games. “For a lot of them, when you’re done, you can’t just retire — unlike men,” she adds. “The rise of endorsement deals and the visibility of women’s sports in general are allowing more women to start making more money.”
Plus, these athletes are authentically influential. A report by SurveyMonkey and Parity found that people are over two times more likely to purchase a product when it’s endorsed by a woman athlete compared to another kind of influencer. And their influence even beats out that of their male athlete counterparts, says Pearson. “If Cameron Brink, a New Balance athlete, posts about a pair of shoes, versus Kawhi Leonard, who’s also a New Balance athlete, you actually see a higher interest in purchase from her followers than you would from the male athlete counterpart,” Pearson explains. “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” says Alexander when I share this stat with her. “To a certain extent, they’re more accessible compared to the NBA guys, who would usually have security with them at all times and be a little more reserved with the public.”
For Pearson, who also happens to be six feet tall, these athletes’ style offers a sense of relatability. “I think ‘I could actually wear that,’ and that’s really refreshing,” she says. At six foot four, Alexander knows the struggle of dressing a tall body all too well. “I didn’t always have access to the things I wanted to wear,” she laments. “You want to be stylish, but you can’t physically wear the clothes.” To solve the problem, Alexander and her co-founder, Nicole Murphy, started Tall Size, an e-commerce marketplace that carries elevated, on-trend clothing brands that cater to women over five foot eight.
And while Alexander’s star is on the rise along with the rest of her peers in the industry, I ask Pearson about which other leagues are bringing their fashion A-game. “The Professional Women’s Hockey League, which started this January, has done a really good job of showing the personalities of its players and their tunnel ’fits,” she says, name-checking Sarah Nurse, Natalie Spooner and Carly Jackson. “It’s the representation that matters, especially for the generation of young women athletes who can see themselves in that position.” Fashion is just one way for fans to lock in on their new favourite players, get a glimpse of their personalities and continue seeking out their games — which, thanks to increases in TV airtime, is becoming easier.
But back to tennis for a moment: Number-two-ranked Coco Gauff broke new ground when she became the first female tennis player to have her own New Balance shoe, for a rumoured one million dollars a year. (The exact financial details of her contract have not been disclosed.) And while these endorsement deals are welcome, Alexander hopes to live to see the day when a woman signs the first million-dollar contract to play.
Until that day comes, they’ll just have to continue dressing the part.
This article first appeared in FASHION’s October 2024 issue. Find out more here.
