For Fashion, Sports Stars are the New Superstars

In the late 1990s, something strange started happening on the cover of glossy magazines. Instead of models, movie stars increasingly became the faces of choice. By 1998, Linda Wells, then the editor of beauty magazine Allure, announced to her staff, “Nobody cares about models anymore.”

A quarter century later, we are at another tipping point. Actors are out, and athletes are in. And not just in the world of menswear, which has long embraced the sports world as part of the fashion world for reasons related to long-held gender stereotypes, but in all worlds.

“Sports stars are the new Hollywood stars,” said Jens Grede, a co-founder of Skims, a brand that reached a $4 billion valuation in four years in part by focusing campaigns on athletes. So far, the Skims stable has included soccer star Neymar, NBA star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Olympic gold medal gymnast Sunisa Lee and a host of WNBA standouts, including Skylar Diggins-Smith and Cameron Brink.

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“We live in the era of hyper-personalization,” Grede said, speaking at a conference about sports and fashion organized by The New York Times in Paris this month ahead of the Summer Olympics. “My content feed looks tremendously different from yours or anyone else’s. As people, as a community, as society, we have fewer and fewer big cultural touch points. Sports might be the only place today where we meet across age, racial, social-economic, religious or political lines. So sport has become an important unifying force.”

Antoine Arnault, the head of image and environment for LVMH, said at the Times event that he believes athletes “are probably even more emotionally connected to everyone” than famous names from film or music.

“We all do sports or have the chance to do sports,” Arnault said. “We cannot all sing and cannot all act.”

Still, the current transformation is about more than simply replacing one kind of celebrity with another. Rather it reflects a deeper shift in how we define and consume culture and how we structure community. And it has altered the balance of power between personal brand and actual brand.

The Talent Arms Race

As movies — and, more pertinently, movie theaters — have splintered under the weight of streaming services and new forms of entertainment, they have been replaced as hubs of shared cultural experience by concerts and sports events. But the most powerful musical artists, names like Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, have consciously chosen not to ally themselves with brands in any formal way, instead spreading their influence among many. As a result, athletes, who for years played a smaller role in fashion (perhaps because their strength and size played against fashion prejudice) have stepped to the fore.

“Who is the most-followed person on Instagram?” Arnault asked rhetorically. “Cristiano Ronaldo. Second-most followed? Lionel Messi. They have 1 billion followers between the two of them. They create a link with their audience that cannot really be found elsewhere.” Little wonder that fashion, increasingly a part of pop culture, has taken notice. An arms race has begun for talent.

At this year’s Met Gala, Maria Sharapova, Dwyane Wade, Ben Simmons and Angel Reese walked the red carpet alongside hosts Zendaya and Jennifer Lopez. This month, Sha’Carri Richardson is on the digital cover of Vogue, and Vogue World, held in Paris this year, featured Serena and Venus Williams, Joe Burrow and Victor Wembanyama in runway roles. Simone Biles has appeared twice on the cover of Vogue, and Serena Williams has done so three times.

The front rows of Louis Vuitton and Prada are rife with athletes. Vuitton’s most recent heritage ad campaign starred Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal; Gucci billboards currently feature Jannik Sinner. LVMH, as part of its sponsorship of the Paris Games, has signed five Olympic athletes as faces of its brands, including swimmer Léon Marchand and rugby player Antoine Dupont. Dior has gone even further, with a stable of 18 athletes as ambassadors.

At the same time, athletes have stopped thinking of themselves in purely performance terms and have begun to follow the influencer playbook. With Instagram, YouTube and X, Grede said, they have the ability to build large networks around their fame and influence that wasn’t available in the past.

Especially because athletes, compared with other celebrities, have so many more opportunities to do so.

Fashion Builds Brands

“You have one concert or one fashion event — or New York Fashion Week,” said Candace Parker, a former WNBA star and the first president of Adidas Women’s Basketball. “But we play 40 games in the WNBA.” Each of those 40 games is an opportunity for athletes to showcase their style and their personality.

“Brands are seeing the value of athletes,” she said, “and these moments not just from viewership of games. They’re seeing the individual benefit of followers.” It can be quantified.

The tunnel walk has become a runway, now routinely chronicled on social media — and not just for players in the NBA but also the NFL, the WNBA and even the WTA. Travis Kelce and Christian McCaffrey used their Super Bowl appearances as veritable fashion ads for Amiri and Hermès. Caitlin Clark made her WNBA draft-day debut in Prada and has since worn Fendi and Louis Vuitton; Brink, sidelined by an ACL tear, continues to post photos of herself in looks by Revolve and is currently on the cover of Flaunt magazine in Versace.

“With NIL, young athletes are taking hold of their brand from an early age,” Parker said of the name, image and likeness endorsement deals struck at the college and high school level. From the start of their careers, she said, athletes are planning for what happens next, and brand-building via fashion is often the first step.

“I’m sure more people see what Angel Reese or Caitlin Clark is wearing in the tunnel than are watching clips online,” Grede said. Then he added: “Why wouldn’t these extraordinary people known for their performance embrace what Hollywood figured out 100 years ago? Fashion builds brands.”

To that end, a stable of support teams has grown up to help athletes navigate the transition — in part because athletes are no longer satisfied with mere pay-to-pose relationships. They want skin in the game, including stock options and roles as collaborators. And if the brands won’t give it to them, they simply build their own, as Tom Brady did with Brady and Russell Wilson did with Good Man.

How Far Could It Go?

“Most athletes want longer-term deals,” Grede said. “They want to align with a brand, but they don’t necessarily want to do 10 or 20 partnerships. Often they come in with a vision of the type of brand they want to build for themselves.”

Parker agreed. “Athletes have more power,” she said. “They’re not signing with any and everyone. They’re being more specific with their partnerships.”

Athletes are now so aware of their own bankability, said Max Vallot and Tom Daly, founders of upstart running brand District Vision, that smaller brands have pretty much been priced out of the market, relying instead on personal relationships. And the bigger brands are having to adjust.

According to designer Yoon Ahn of Ambush and Nike, Naomi Osaka specifically requested that Nike delegate Ahn work with her on looks for her U.S. comeback at the end of the summer.

“I think you’re going to see more and more brands that have to get on board and be a part of it,” Parker said.

Certainly, Arnault of LVMH said of athletes, “We’re going to continue and probably even increase that link.” Indeed, last week Dior unveiled a new partnership with Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton in which Hamilton will become not only a face of the brand but also codesign a line with Dior men’s artistic director Kim Jones.

Could Arnault envision a time when LVMH would hire a basketball player or a fencer or a runner as creative director for one of its brands?

“You know, we hired a performer to be our creative director,” Arnault said, referring to the appointment of Pharrell Williams at Louis Vuitton. He smiled. “Why not?”

c.2024 The New York Times Company