Up Next
How stylists are helping WNBA players elevate their drip
From femme to masc, players in the W are stepping up their style
There are more eyes on the WNBA this season than ever before. The increased visibility has also brought more attention to the players themselves, including their style. According to Harper’s Bazaar, the W tunnel has become “the hottest runway of the year,” and Vogue declared it “officially a fashion destination.”
These days, brands are clamoring to work with WNBA players. Increasingly, players are hiring stylists to help them look their best, and athletes such as Angel Reese, Cameron Brink, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and DiJonai Carrington are full-fledged fashion icons. But so too are players who rock more masculine or androgynous looks, such as Arike Ogunbowale, Courtney Williams, and Diamond DeShields, players whose looks don’t get nearly the attention or praise they deserve.
“Sometimes when we look at female athletes we assume fashionable means ‘feminine’ and a lot of the more masculine-presenting WNBA players really do have style about them,” said Amadi Brooks of Amadi B Styling, who works with Sydney Colson and A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces. “That’s the beautiful thing about the W — it’s such a wide range.”
Styling masculine-of-center women is an art in and of itself, and picking out fashionable looks that fall outside of traditionally feminine silhouettes takes thought and intention. Players such as Connecticut Sun star Alyssa Thomas are upping their fashion game this year by using stylists to help them get there, while others have been quietly doing so for years.
“It’s not so niche anymore to have a stylist and it doesn’t have to be a secret,” Brooks said.
“Before this year, we were just here for business, you know?” Thomas told Harper’s Bazaar. “We would come do our job … But now that we’re putting on the clothes and taking the time to stop for a picture, people are so fascinated by it, and, I mean, I’m super into it.”
The WNBA has the most gender-diverse fashion sense of almost any other professional sports league in the world, and it’s part of what makes the W special. “The WNBA fan subculture respects and celebrates masculine fashion choices while not stripping away womanhood from these players,” Lauren Hindman, Ajhanai Keaton, and Nefertiti Walker wrote in Sports Business Journal. But all too often, the players whose style gets highlighted by media coverage are the ones whose clothing tends to fit conventionally feminine standards and expression.
The WNBA athletes have fought hard to be their authentic selves on and off the court. As the WNBA goes mainstream, it’s even more important to ensure that the league’s visible queerness and gender diversity are not erased. Helping players find a style that feels true to who they are is important, not just for their own comfort but also for their on-court performance.
“I want to make sure I’m staying true to the athletes,” Brooks said of how she approaches dressing her clients, who include NBA and WNBA players. “It’s even more important when you work with an athlete, because their confidence going into a big moment like a game can have an impact on them, so you don’t want them to feel out of their body or not like themselves.”
Marisa Ripepi of Marisa Styled has been dressing the Connecticut Sun star Alyssa Thomas (along with her teammate and fiancée, DeWanna Bonner) since the beginning of this season. Ripepi stressed how important comfort is for someone like Thomas, and that is where selecting items for her begins.
“When we first started working together she told me she really looks up to Devin Booker’s style,” Ripepi said. “Alyssa’s style is comfortable and stylish but laid-back. We are always trying to step it up a notch.”
For Ripepi, that has meant slowly pushing Thomas to try new things. They style by the month, and Ripepi said Thomas’ outfits began to evolve throughout the season, like the denim ensemble she sported for the Sun’s game against the Los Angeles Sparks on June 18.
“When she first came to me and said she wants to look a certain way, I’m going to give her exactly that so she knows I understand her vision,” Ripepi said. “But once we are working together for a while and we build trust, that’s when I start to throw in more things. The goal is to elevate the look but for her style.”
Some players, such as the Washington Mystics guard Brittney “Slim” Sykes, have no problem pushing the envelope when it comes to what they wear but want to have some professional guidance about which direction to go. “She likes to expand her horizons and try new things,” Sykes’ stylist, Juwan Williams of Styled by Coz, said. “I love it when somebody likes to be open to new things.”
Williams, who has been working with Sykes for a few seasons, said that pushing her toward streetwear helped her find her voice. Her confidence has grown as she’s learned to dress her body and see the positive reception to her outfits, including being featured on GQ Sports last season. “Now that she is a bit more confident, she has been consulting fits with me,” Williams said. “She picks out her own outfits, and I will approve them.”
Another key to styling women in menswear is always to be conscious of fit — and to have a good tailor on speed dial. “Although we [may be] dressing Syd in menswear, we have to be particular about how the clothes fit on her waist,” Brooks said. “What might fit through the thigh for a man may not for a woman, so we might have to go up a size and alter their waist, for example.”
Brooks said that working with Colson is fun because her style is a mix of masculine and feminine. She cited a Sheila Rashid pantsuit that Colson wore for the Aces game May 25 against the Indiana Fever as an example of that duality. Colson had been previously wearing more androgynous looks on game day and decided she wanted to switch it up just to be unpredictable. So they decided to go topless under Colson’s cropped suit jacket, giving it a feminine edge.
Who Colson is wearing is just as important as what she is wearing. “For Syd, it’s important to rep both sides of masculine and feminine but also to shine a spotlight on underrepresented brands, Black-owned brands,” Brooks said. “She is intentional about that and would prefer to highlight those brands over typical big fashion brands.”
But for many players, having a stylist goes beyond just wanting to look good. Plenty of athletes have their own inherent fashion sense and can do an incredible job of dressing themselves, but it takes mental energy and time to prepare outfits. A pro athlete’s schedule is already exhausting and jam-packed, and having a stylist can allow players to delegate their clothing to someone else.
“A lot of players want to put their best foot forward and maybe that means using a stylist to take that off their plate but they still feel good about how they look,” Brooks said. “People don’t consider the time relief that having a stylist may have on players, for some of my clients it’s one less thing for them to think about on game day.”