Maria Sharapova will return to the U.S. Open next week wearing a Swarovski-studded all-black tennis dress by Riccardo Tisci for Nike.
Featuring technical lace and eyelet-like perforations, Sharapova will wear the LBD for her night matches. An acknowledgment to high fashion x court dressing. Preppy be gone.
“It was always going to be black. It wasn’t even a question of what we were going to do for the night matches.”
In 2006, Sharapova won the Open in a black dress (pictured above). “When I think of anywhere that I play, I want to bring a sense of elegance to the feeling that I have when I walk onto the court. That’s what I felt with the 2006 dress, and what I really wanted to relive in this dress is the moment of elegance and thinking of Audrey Hepburn and her classic Givenchy dress,” she said.
Tisci, the former Givenchy creative director, has become Nike’s most prolific fashion collaborator, taking on everything from its Dunk sneakers to creating a full range of athletic apparel in psychedelic florals for the 2016 Olympics. Sharapova added, “There are so many things that really make sense in this collaboration. The inspiration was there from the first moment that we sat down together.”
“I respect Maria so much as an athlete, and she respects me so much as a designer, and both of us work for Nike, so it came up as a collaboration that we’d like to do together. To me, it was very special to design an outfit for an athlete playing on the courts,” said Tisci
“That moment she had in 2006 was a very iconic moment, and we wanted to honor it and be inspired by it. We decided to use lace and crystal, which are very me, and black, which is my favorite color and very representative of my career but also the color that has brought a lot of luck for her. So when we started talking about this project, it just made sense,” he said.
“We spent a few hours talking about inspiration, and actually none of it had to do with tennis,” said Sharapova. “A lot of it had to do with design and how I wanted to feel and what elements he wanted to bring to this from a completely different background than just sports, from couture, from fashion. We really wanted to blend those elements together.”
The Swarovski crystals, which will be glittering in the spotlights of Arthur Ashe Stadium, came in a bit later in the process. “I did four or five drawings, she chose right away the black one, and then the crystal came in the second meeting, when I said it would be fantastic for crystal to be a part of the dress,” Tisci explained.
“Crystals have never happened before on a tennis player.”
“I’m very happy because it is very modern and pure. Everything is very geometric. The lace looks like the classic fishnet they use on tennis outfits, and the shape, the design is very pure. It’s very elegant, very minimal but at the same time very strong.”
The look comes complete with a black bomber jacket, tailored to Sharapova’s exact specifications.
“One of the things we spoke about is I love this feeling of elegance, but I love to mix it in with masculine pieces and oversize things, and so when we talked about a jacket it was like: We’re going to do a bomber and we’re going to make it nice and big and billowy in the back,” she said.
“We worked with proportion a lot, because when you think of elegance and sexiness you always think of things that are streamlined and very body conscious, but I think this is more about a play of materials, textures, and shapes coming together,” said Sharapova.
The LBD ($500) and Bomber Jacket ($700) will go on sale August 26 in Nike stores. Photos courtesy Nike.
