The connection between sports and fashion dates back centuries. The passion for sportswear developed little by little, as more people became interested in outdoor activities and leisure pursuits. Special clothing and accessories, such as cycling and cricket attires, were created to cater to these new pursuits. As interest grew, other sports soon saw their own specialized apparel being created.
In the 1930s, designers like Schiaparelli, Worth, and Lanvin-Sport crafted dynamic yet elegant designs for women who enjoyed skiing. Emilio Pucci continued in this direction and started his fashion career in the late '40s when he designed ski uniforms for himself and his girlfriend in Zermatt, Switzerland.
The landscape evolved with the emergence of numerous sports brands offering dynamic designs promising amateurs and professionals excellent performances. In recent years, collaborations between sports brands and fashion designers have multiplied, and fashion and sports exhibitions in museums were also organized (like the one that took place in 2008 at London's V&A).
Many designers also started creating special suits for athletes or official Olympic kits, further intertwining the worlds of sports and fashion. Additionally, athletes' attire and style gained significant attention during sports events.
Serena Williams's supersuits, Sha'Carri Richardson's fierce look or the leotards and bodysuits donned by gymnasts such as Simone Biles, have inspired not just trends, but prompted debates about fashion, athletic performance and, obviously, women’s bodies.
Some sports generated constant interest from the fashion industry: tenniscore has always been trending. Zendaya adopted tenniscore for the film tour to promote Luca Guadagnino's "The Challengers" and donned designs that generated a lot of media revenue, such as the sequinned tennis dress matched with pumps with tennis ball heels by JW Anderson for Loewe. Yet, in the late '70s and early '80s, Sergio Tacchini's tennis gear was the favourite attire of many in Italy who had never set foot on a tennis court, as the classic white ensembles looked smart and elegant, but were also functional.
At the end of July, the Olympic Games will kick off in Paris, France. Opening and closing ceremonies are a bit like runway shows, with the different teams often clad in uniforms by this or that designer - one of the latest is Stella Jean who created the Olympic Uniforms for Team Haiti. At this year's Olympic Games, aside from the return of the skateboarding girls, there will also be a debut sport you don't want to miss and that will definitely set up some fashion trends - breakdancing.
Among the others jumping on the sports bandwagon at the moment there's also Anna Wintour, Vogue's editor-in-chief and global chief content officer for Condé Nast, a tennis aficionado herself.
Wintour is currently busy putting the final touches to the third instalment of Vogue World, that, featuring looks from each decade since 1924, the last time the Olympics took place in Paris, will be a fashion pageant in which different decades will be matched with different sports, from cycling to breakdancing with looks from famous fashion houses.
The event will take place in Paris' Place Vendôme on 23 June and will include performers, fashion people and Olympic athletes (the inaugural event in 2022 also featured Serena Williams). Proceeds from ticket sales (some free tickets will be reserved to fashion students and aspiring athletes) will go to Secours Populaire, a French nonprofit promoting access to sport for children.
But there are deeper links between fashion houses and sports if you think about Prada's Luna Rossa, a team that has written the history of Italian and international sailing, but that also inspired a clothes and accessory line and fragrances; or Giorgio Armani who owns basketball team, Olimpia Milano, with kits obviously sponsored by EA7 Emporio Armani.
Prada and Armani's sports links and the way they combine ownership with sponsorship and sport excellence is currently trending.
Italian sports brand Lotto, recently announced a partnership with the Brooklyn Aces: joining owners Kevin Durant, Rich Kleiman, Drake and Michael B. Jordan, Lotto has become the first athletic brand in the ownership group of a professional pickleball team.
The brand, established in 1973 and with a long history in tennis and soccer, will obviously also be the official sponsor as Lotto branding will be integrated into the Brooklyn Aces logo and on player apparel.
As Brooklyn Aces is a Professional Pickleball team that competes in Major League Pickleball (MLP), this will be a profitable venture for Lotto, considering that the pickleball community is on the rise and that this is currently the fastest-growing sport in America (according to the 2024 Sports & Fitness Industry Association (SFIA) Topline Participation Report), having grown 51.8% from 2022 to 2023, and an incredible 223.5% in three year. Now while these news may still be filed under "profitable sponsorship and ownership of a sports team", there are also slightly more bizarre sport-related news, such as former accessory and fashion designer Olympia Le-Tan founding with her brother-in-law a Japanese pro-wrestling league – Sukeban.
The inspiration came from a trip to Japan during which Le-Tan got the chance to see some Japanese female wrestling matches (Joshi Pro). The young women in Sukeban - a term indicating a delinquent girl or the leader of a girl gang - are not just wrestling athletes, though.
The athletes wear costumes designed by Le-Tan, who also oversees creative direction (her role as costume designers allows her to let explore her more theatrical side, something that didn't often go down too well in her commercial fashion collections) curating the image of athletes.
The girls - from Goth Commander Nakajima, the champion of the group and member of the Dangerous Liaisons, to Crush Yuu, part of the tomboy-ish Cherry Bomb Girls, but there are other gangs in the Sukeban, including the Vandals and the Harajuku Stars - are in a way also fashion models capable of attracting a stylish crowd as it happened in their tours last year in New York, Miami and, more recently, Los Angeles.
Costumes are complemented by multicolored hair and bold makeup styles (and in some cases even hats by Stephen Jones...), so here, rather than just a fashion and sport connection, there is a combination of glamour, wrestling, fashion and anime, with an elevated sense of visual entertainment and spectacle with a kawaii-gone-violent goth twist (forget Rhonda Singh, the legendary Monster Ripper as in this case each character is dressed to the nines, often in super stretchy latex designs).
Sukeban, also represents a sort of new venture: a popular sport from another country was appropriated, repackaged and exported as a touring entertainment (some of these wrestling battles seem to be more about the clothes and the theatricality than about mere wrestling...). In this way the teams (or rather gangs...) of wrestlers put up a spectacle, a touring and dynamic fashion show that sells tickets, but also merchandise.
What next for the fashion and sports connection? Chanel sponsored gymnasts? Balenciaga skateboarders or maybe Dior dressing the legendary Cholitas (wait, this could actually work with Dior's ample pleated skirt from the "Bar" suit View this photo reinvented for the Cholitas…)? Sukeban at the Olympic Games? Sky's the limit, as they say, but let's hope that some fashion money will also be pumped in women's teams in sports that are not so well-known or that do not receive the support given to men's sports, from curling to Australian rugby.
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