The collection arriving for fall is not just a celebration of Williams’s style and an opportunity for her many fans to get the Williams look, but an opportunity for the 10 members of Nike’s initial Serena Williams Design Crew to jumpstart their careers.
Serena Williams and Her Nike Design Crew Debut Their First Collection
Way back in 2019, Serena Williams and Nike teamed up for a first-of-its-kind partnership. Under Williams’s leadership, Nike would select 10 emerging designers from underrepresented backgrounds to work on a new, Serena Williams-inspired and -approved collection from Nike’s Beaverton headquarters. The 10 winners were scouted with the help of Harlem’s Fashion Row and New York’s fashion schools like the Fashion Institute of Technology and Parsons, as well as from within Nike’s retail stores, and were given an unprecedented 18 months to design and craft their perfect collection of Serena-ready garments. Today, the collection is finally here.
“They took it to a place where I could never have seen it; that was just really exciting,” Williams says over a Zoom call. The inaugural Serena Williams Design Crew collection takes cues from Williams’s life, such as her daughter’s OO initials (a double meaning with zero meaning “love” in tennis”), West African Kente cloth-inspired prints with hidden S monograms, and her 23 Grand Slam titles, and incorporates them into ready-to-wear and footwear. “I feel like they were able to communicate my aesthetics very well through the silhouettes that they brought, in the patterns that they brought, and in the colors as well,” Williams says. “It’s something really fun. It’s definitely bold. And it’s definitely different–but it’s also very wearable. I think that’s also really important.”
Photo: Courtesy of Nike
Photo: Courtesy of Nike
The sport and style icon admits that even her own sense of style has changed after our months of lockdowns and social distancing. “I went from, you know, red carpets and amazing Off-White sneakers from Nike and Virgil [Abloh] to suddenly sweats, which I love and I’m still loving,” Williams starts with a laugh, “but now I’m ready to go back to fashion more than ever with things that are even more designed.” This collection offers that and more, riffing on Williams’s unbeatable personal style with one-shouldered sports bras and contrast-sleeve tops intended to highlight her serving arm. (Or yours!) Her favorite piece? “I love the jumpsuit—I think it is so unique.”
The Nike Court Legacy Serena Williams sneaker Photo: Courtesy of Nike
The Nike RYZ 365 2 Serena Williams sneaker Photo: Courtesy of Nike
The Nike Air Max Koko Serena Williams sneaker Photo: Courtesy of Nike
Designing the footwear, a large selection of Nike Court Legacy, Air Max Koko, and RYZ 365 2 styles, was more of a challenge—and a collaboration. “It’s going to surprise you, but I’m not a big shoe person,” Williams admits. However hard that might be to believe—ahem, remember the Off-White Nikes at the Met Gala?!–she says, “I’m always looking for inspiration. When it came to the shoes, I really relied on the designers. I said, I need you all to lead me because I’m the person that likes to wear the shoes; I’m not a shoe designer at all.”
The large collection arriving for fall is not just a celebration of Williams’s style and an opportunity for her many fans to get the Williams look, but an opportunity for the 10 members of Nike’s initial Serena Williams Design Crew to jumpstart their careers. “Of the 10 individuals that were a part of the initial apprenticeship, seven of them actually now work at Nike as full-time employees,” says Jarvis Sam, Nike’s vice president of global diversity and inclusion. “The other three are actually in the fashion industry, so the Serena Williams design crew offered the opportunity for them to gain tangible experience where now we truly are seeing the impact on the industry.”
This story originally appeared on: Vogue - Author:Steff Yotka
