How Athletes Became the Biggest Players in Luxury Fashion

Last September, the tennis player Lorenzo Musetti, then ranked No. 10 in the world, walked into Arthur Ashe Stadium for his U.S. Open quarterfinal against fellow Italian Jannik Sinner wearing something unusual for both a professional tennis match and a 77-degree day: a black Bottega Veneta leather jacket with a collar crosshatched in the brand’s signature intrecciato pattern. The garment was, of course, designed for someone going to a gallery opening or a fashion show, not a tennis stadium. That’s precisely why it generated so much attention online. “He may have lost the match, but he 100 percent won the fit,” said a tennis influencer on TikTok. “I am absolutely speechless.”

Two months before, then 23-year-old Musetti had been named a Bottega Veneta brand ambassador alongside A-listers such as Julianne Moore and Jacob Elordi. That Bottega Veneta chose an athlete—especially a male athlete—as a part of that lineup signals both a shift in how fashion houses are thinking about broadening their appeal and an evolution in sports stars’ relationships with high fashion. “I think it is the perfect match because we have the same values,” Musetti says. Yes, there’s a shared Italian heritage, but Bottega Veneta wants to associate itself with craft and excellence in whatever form those may take. If you’ve watched Musetti move around the court and hit his Federer-esque one-handed backhand, then you’ll understand.

Lorenzo Musetti, Tennis

For just about the entire history of professional sports, athletic endorsements were almost exclusively about physical performance. When Honus Wagner etched his signature into a Louisville Slugger in 1905, the clear logic was that the bat would bring laymen closer to Wagner’s athletic gifts; when Olympians appeared on Wheaties boxes, you were meant to believe that cereal would make you stronger. But in the past two decades, the appeal and influence of the professional athlete has expanded, spilling into the culture at large. Sports viewership is up globally, and live events have become extraordinarily valuable to brands competing for eyeballs. After squeezing out every deal possible in Hollywood, the music industry, and hospitality, luxury fashion is now taking over sports. All the while, the ambitions of the athletes themselves have changed too.

Virgil van Dijk, Soccer

Dutch soccer star Virgil van Dijk has been around for much of this shift. When the 34-year-old Liverpool captain went pro in 2011, the overlap between high fashion and professional sports was still relatively uncommon. (Yes, there was David Beckham, but back then his embrace of fashion was considered both an anomaly and a distraction from his game.) More than a decade into van Dijk’s career, he’s appeared on the cover of in-the-know menswear magazines and starred in an editorial for the cult Danish brand Rains. He works with a stylist—Pernille Teisbaek—a detail that would have raised eyebrows a generation ago but is now standard practice for top athletes. TikTok and Instagram are filled not only with his on-field highlight reels but also with photos of his outfits, like the tastefully slouchy double-breasted Saint Laurent suit he wore to last year’s Professional Footballers’ Association awards.

“Right now, I’m learning about the fashion world more at a craft level, and that’s been inspiring,” van Dijk says. His current tastes veer toward vintage pieces and away from logos. When he talks about what draws him to fashion, the parallel he reaches for is the one you’d expect from a man who has spent his career studying what separates good defenders from great ones. “The hard work that no one really sees,” he explains. “There’s so much work that goes on to deliver a masterpiece. That comes back to what I do in my profession. I know what it takes.”

Jayson Tatum, Basketball

For team sport athletes, personal style has its own logic. When Jayson Tatum, the 28-year-old NBA forward, plays with the Boston Celtics, he wears what the rest of his teammates do: a green and white basketball jersey with matching mesh shorts. But ever since NBA stars like Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and Dwyane Wade started showing up to game day in designer clothes, the tunnel walk has become the place where a basketball player’s individuality gets to shine. Tatum, who is six foot eight and one of the best basketball players in the world, has turned his pregame arrivals into one-man fashion shows that generate coverage beyond ESPN. He famously wore a Dolce & Gabbana blazer that played with texture, color, and pattern before Game 1 of the 2022 NBA Finals and, earlier this year, paired a Lanvin denim outfit with Timberland boots for his return to the court after rupturing his Achilles tendon last season. Now a Coach ambassador, Tatum says his interest in fashion goes back to his childhood: “As a kid, I would envision myself in the league having my own style.”

Julio Rodríguez, Baseball

Julio Rodríguez, a 25-year-old center fielder for the Seattle Mariners, has taken the self-expression mandate further than most athletes. Like many baseball players (see Miguel Rojas, who sported a Van Cleef & Arpels necklace during the World Series last year), Rodríguez wears jewelry on the field, including a gold rope chain with a cherub pendant, which has become his signature. More adventurously, in 2024, he wore Swarovski crystal–bedazzled cleats that shimmered every time he stepped into the batter’s box. “I’m very free when I’m playing, and I always have something a little loud on me,” he explains. “I just try to be as authentic as I can. That’s my brand on and off the field.”

Yuto Horigome, Skateboarding

Unlike many other sports, skateboarding has had a steady presence in the fashion world since the 1990s, when labels such as Supreme overlapped with and influenced downtown New York designers. The bond grew even stronger in the past decade with designers such as Virgil Abloh, who expressly looked to skating to inform his work at Off-White and Louis Vuitton. It says a lot that Pharrell Williams, who took up Abloh’s mantle, had built a skate brand, a skate team, and was nicknamed Skateboard P.

This year, Louis Vuitton tapped Yuto Horigome, the 27-year-old Japanese skater and two-time Olympic gold medalist, to represent them. He’s in good company; the brand’s roster of professional skaters includes Lucien Clarke and Tyshawn Jones. When Horigome moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to skate professionally—and started rooming with fashion-minded skater Dashawn Jordan—he realized that what he wore could change how the world understood him. Unlike most professional sports, skateboarding has no uniforms or clothing regulations. “It’s such a free sport,” says Horigome. “You’re allowed to do anything you want, and because of that it’s intertwined with so many different cultures.” During competitions, Horigome opts for the functional skater-favorite combination of a comfortable T-shirt and baggy pants. His fashion sense comes alive in his skating videos: In one from 2023, he skates down an apostrophe-shaped sculpture in Tokyo wearing a hat from the golf brand Metalwood Studio, a black Nike ACG hoodie, and light-wash jeans. Doing something impossible-looking imbues whatever he’s wearing with an undeniable swagger.

Noah Lyles, Track

Another Olympian, the three-time medalist Noah Lyles, has been running a one-man campaign to bring style consciousness to track and field, where top talents rarely enjoy the mainstream fame of NBA or MLB players. While competing, Lyles will wear nail polish; he walked in a Willy Chavarria runway show and rocked a slim-fitting Celine leather jacket with crystal embellishments for his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. This flamboyance is part of a broader aim, which is to make track and field more culturally influential. “I really tried to push the sport into doing tunnel walks,” he says. Part of this pitch meant explaining to track officials what, exactly, a fashion photographer was. (Lyles ended up hiring his own.) “If I look good and feel good, I’m going to run a good race,” he says.

Being a fashionable athlete pays much better than being just an athlete. Lyles has been an Adidas ambassador since he first went pro, in 2016. In February 2024, after raising his profile with Olympic wins and flashy outfits, he signed a new deal, “the richest contract in the sport since the retirement of Usain Bolt,” as his agency put it. In track and field, where top athletes sometimes make about a 10th of the minimum NBA yearly contract, clothing deals can dwarf on-field earnings. They can rival incomes for the highest-paid athletes in other sports too. Take Roger Federer, who, in 2018, signed a 10-year $300 million deal with Uniqlo. Or Carlos Alcaraz, who earned $21 million in prize money last year and has a Louis Vuitton deal rumored to be worth tens of millions.

Pierre Gasly, Formula 1

Since last year, LVMH has upped its investment in Formula 1. The fashion conglomerate has become the racing franchise’s global partner, putting an estimated $1 billion into a 10-year deal. It makes sense, considering F1 is growing quickly with a younger, digitally savvy audience, and is making huge inroads among female viewers. It doesn’t hurt that most of the drivers are dashing daredevils; studs in nice cars have an enduring hold on our cultural imagination. “Driving at the absolute limit of the fastest car in the world, going 350 kph, is a type of art,” says Pierre Gasly, the 30-year-old French driver for BWT Alpine Formula One Team and Lacoste’s first F1 ambassador. That kind of hyperfocus is like a gravity well for spectators’ attention. “Every day, every condition, every lap is different. You’re always trying to master it with some sort of creativity of your own.”

Ultimately, what all these guys are doing is claiming a different kind of spotlight than the one they’re used to. After spending their entire lives excelling in fields that have generally prioritized traditional definitions of masculinity, they are experimenting with how they present themselves to the world. “It’s really nice to be able to show yourself in a way that’s new,” says van Dijk. “I’m still Virgil the football player. But there’s another side of me in how I express myself on and off the pitch. It’s really good to get that out.”

Noah Lyles: Grooming by Jomocuts; Photo Assistant: Fallou Seck; Fashion Assistant: Lizzie Bowden; Special Thanks to AIRE Ancient Baths Upper East Side. Yuto Horigome: Grooming by Nathaniel Dezan for 111Skin at Opus Beauty; Photo Assistant: Harmony Bauer; Retouching: Kushtrim Kunushevci. Jayson Tatum: Grooming by Julius Gutierrez; Photo Assistant: Timothy O’Connell; Retouching: Kushtrim Kunushevci. Julio Rodríguez: Grooming by Kaija Mistral Towner for Typology; Photo Assistant: Jonah Besel; Retouching: Kushtrim Kunushevci; Fashion Assistant: Melaiah Echo. Pierre Gasly: Grooming by Daniela Magginetti at Blend Management; On-Set Producer: Gloria Gotti. Lorenzo Musetti: Grooming by Jessica Chan for amika at Michelle Leo Agency; Photo Assistant: Thomas Armstrong; Retouching: Ink Retouch; Fashion Assistant: Macarena Cubino; Special Thanks to Hard Rock Stadium. Virgil van Dijk: Grooming by Reuben Wood.