The branding of the W.N.B.A. as the most well liked league in any recreation continues apace, as does the rising convergence of vogue and sports activities.
The most recent step within the relationship: a Skims advert marketing campaign launched simply forward of the beginning of the ladies’s basketball season and that includes the rookie Cameron Brink, the newly retired three-time W.N.B.A. champion-turned-president of Adidas basketball Candace Parker and the All-Stars and Olympians Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces and Skylar Diggins-Smith of the Seattle Storm and DiJonai Carrington of the Connecticut Solar.
The marketing campaign depicts the gamers in varied skin-tone lingerie — bikini and high-waist briefs, boy shorts, bandeaus and T-shirts — accessorized with basketballs, high-heel pumps and elaborate rhinestone jewellery. It each toys with outdated pinup tropes and subverts them — the ladies look much less come hither than don’t mess with me. It additionally frames Skims, which was based by Kim Kardashian and Jens Grede in 2018 and valued at $4 billion final July, much less as shapewear than haute sportswear.
It’s the first Skims marketing campaign to rejoice ladies gamers, following the model’s final two large basketball strikes: an analogous shoot that launched the Skims males’s line and featured Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder, amongst different athletes, and a marketing campaign simply in time for March Insanity that includes male all-star school basketball gamers. (They had been principally in terry loungewear, not underwear.)
On the time, given the record-setting recognition of the ladies’s N.C.A.A. event, some followers criticized Skims for specializing in male athletes slightly than ladies. That is the reply.
It’s a reflection of the rising energy of the ladies’s recreation and the star attraction that has been dropped at the sport by the brand new class of draft picks, who’re extra conscious than ever of the leverage that comes from private branding — and related relationships with the style world.
Ms. Brink, for instance, the second draft choose, who’s enjoying for the Los Angeles Sparks, wore Balmain on the W.N.B.A. orange carpet, has near 790,000 Instagram followers and has been working with the stylist Mary Gonsalves Kinney for the final two years.
Her fellow draftee Angel Reese, who was chosen seventh by the Chicago Sky, attended the Met Gala final week in a feathered chiffon robe custom-made by 16Arlington and lately unveiled her personal Good American denims marketing campaign. (Good American was based by Ms. Kardashian’s sister Khloé Kardashian and Emma Grede, Mr. Grede’s spouse.)
And Caitlin Clark, the No. 1 draft choose, chosen by the Indiana Fever, arrived for her first information convention after the W.N.B.A. draft in Indianapolis in a Louis Vuitton gown and jacket after donning an all-Prada search for the draft.
In flip, Skims, which ranked thirteenth within the Lyst Index of most searched vogue manufacturers within the first quarter of 2024, has moved aggressively into sports activities. In October, it grew to become the primary official underwear associate of the N.B.A., W.N.B.A. and USA Basketball.
On the time, Ms. Kardashian described the partnership as “a mirrored image of Skims’ rising affect on tradition” and mentioned the connection would present up in “surprising methods.” Presumably, the advert marketing campaign is a type of. In an electronic mail, Ms. Kardashian mentioned she had been planning the W.N.B.A. marketing campaign for the reason that deal was signed.
The basketball partnership adopted the model’s signing on because the official underwear associate of Staff USA for the Tokyo Olympics. Not lengthy after the W.N.B.A. deal was introduced, Skims unveiled a vacation marketing campaign starring Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, and his household, all lounging round in plaid PJs.
Skims is just not the one vogue (or fashion-adjacent) firm to collaborate with athletes as a part of a strategic play. This summer season, the Paris Olympics is being sponsored partially by LVMH, the French luxurious group, which has been signing up Olympians as model ambassadors for vogue homes like Dior and Vuitton. Competitors, in spite of everything, doesn’t simply occur on the court docket.
