Tavi Gevinson stopped by Late Night to practice her bitchface with Jimmy Fallon… absolute dream duo right there. {HuffPost}
Forget wearing all black or sitting shiva, Lady Gaga chose to mourn the passing of Terry Richardson’s mom with… an undercut. {Refinery29}
Ever since the US Open began Monday, something very funny has been happening over at WWD. The industry newspaper–dedicated to reporting the comings and goings of the fashion and beauty world–has been talking grand slams and sports stats.
We’ve been noticing tennis-related posts popping up on all sorts of fashion-related sites. In the past few days, NY Times has run a piece dissecting female players’ hairstyles, WWD has reported on Ryan Harrison’s “brat attack”, NOWNESS premiered a dramatic, smoke-filled video starring tennis A-listers taking swings, and Vogue has run several tennis-themed features including a profile on the sports’ newest stars and a look at Maria Sharapova’s fashion cred.
Yes, some of these have been legitimately fashion-related, but it’s still a whole lot more industry buzz than has been given to other sports (Can you imagine a football-related headline on WWD!?)
Let’s take a look at the evolution of the fashion industry’s love affair with tennis.
Tennis is a very fashionable sport. Some evidence: the Williams sisters, who keep the court colorful wearing anything but tennis whites; Maria Sharapova and her collection for Cole Haan; Bethanie Mattek-Sands and the Alex Noble-designed tennis ball jacket she wore to Wimbledon this week; the British Fashion Council dressed Wimbledon players for an event celebrating the tournament’s 125th; Anna Wintour‘s superfandom (anything for Roger)–and the list could go on.
So as Wimbledon draws to a close, Nielsen/E-Poll N-Scores took a poll to rank the top most stylish tennis players. Neilson determined the rankings by polling 1,100 respondents and looking at those players who were described as “stylish” by respondents as well as factoring in something called an “N-Score.” Here’s the methodology:
“Using the combined research expertise of Nielsen and E-Poll Market Research, N-Score is an in-depth look at a sports figure’s overall endorsement potential, factoring in the attributes and demographic measures that align brands with endorsers. N-Score Local provides this information for athletes within their team’s local market as well as nationwide. Players are defined as Hall of Fame (receiving an N-Score of 200+), Superstar (100 to 199), MVP (50 to 99), All Star (30 to 49) and Starter (fewer than 30).”
So who got the highest N-Score? It wasn’t a Williams sister. In fact, only one Williams sister just barely made the list. See the surprising top 10 list, with pics of each player on the court and on the red carpet:
Reports surfaced in June that Nike had chosen Annie Leibovitz to photograph the fall 2011 ad campaign and we just got a hold of all the images. The campaign stars seven elite female athletes–Nike’s “Make Yourself” team. Nike launched “Make Yourself” last year with the intention of inspiring and motivating women to “achieve their goals and become the best ‘versions’ of themselves.” It would basically be difficult not to feel motivated by these images of impossibly physically fit ladies working out in sports bras, including USA track and field Olympian Allyson Felix, Chinese tennis player Li Na, Algerian-French dancer Sofia Boutella, British hurdler Perri Shakes-Drayton, Russian-born tennis star Maria Sharapova, USA goalkeeper Hope Solo and Australian surfer Laura Enever. Like, if I had a membership to a gym, I would definitely go work out at it right now. Maybe I’ll just download one of Nike’s iPhone workouts instead. Click through for all the images.
Which celebrity do you think we’ll see more of this week: Lindsay Lohan (Twitter tells us she’s already in town), Taylor Momsen (her band’s playing at FNO and we sense that’s only the beginning), Maria Sharapova (ousted by America’s new sweetheart at the Open this weekend…speaking of who’s going to snag Melanie Oudin first?), or Read more →
First the actresses thought they should have runway shows, then came the singers, and finally – thank you, Lauren Conrad – the reality stars. Now it seems some athletes want in, too. Next week, Maria Sharapova hosts her own fashion show in London, where she’ll show off her latest “lifestyle” wares: New Sony Ericsson phones. Read more →
