This Met Gala is filled with pro athletes. Dressing them is a unique challenge

When Brittney Griner was the first WNBA player in 2023 who visited the Met Gala, just a few months after she was released from a Russian prison in a top-class prison, she looked effortlessly cool and chic in a tailor-made champagne colors in Calvin Klein.

The celebrity stylist Courtney May was behind the look, who has disguised some of the greatest stars in sports for more than a decade. The job 6-foot-9-Foot-9-Foot-9- is much more complicated when working with the unique proportions of professional athletes.

Couple who work under the restrictions of the Vogue editor Anna Wintour: the Met Gala chair for the Vogue editor in which she imagines the guest -then it is up to the stylist to combine a look at these parameters.

“It was a learning experience for me,” said May. “I had a voice in this world in a way, but also when Anna says: ‘I want you to wear that,’ you have to participate.”

Mays and the team moved together in three weeks and flew to Phoenix once a week to get “long and intensive” equipment with several tailors. Then May’s Los Angeles Shoemaker George Esquivel, who had previously made shoes for the NBA stars Kevin Love and Deandre Jordan to create a tailor -made couple for men.

Athletes on the Met

In recent years, more and more athletes have received coveted invitations to the annual fundraising campaign. This year there are sports at the head of the gala with Formula 1 star Lewis Hamilton as co-chair, Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James as honorary chairman and several other athletes in the host committee.

At the beginning of this year, the Met announced that the Chicago Sky star Angel Reese and the Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and Sha’carri Richardson will be able to revive a guest committee for the evening.

[Related: Sky’s Angel Reese has a rousing return to Baton Rouge in exhibition vs. Brazil]

“It is amazing to work with Anna [Wintour] And her team, “said Hamilton on Thursday.” [had] Was a privilege to continue doing things with fashion. It’s fun. … the work has been with us in drops in the past two years.

Wintour said “Good Morning America” on Friday that she still does not know what Lewis is wearing “, but trusts him.

The MET GALA on Monday starts this year’s Metropolitan Museum of Art Spring Costume, “Superfine: Tailoring the Black Style”, and the associated dress code is “tailored for you”. Mays have long had a reinforced representation of athletes, especially those who are black, in luxury fashion surfaces.

“I hope that this type of a sheet twists as fashion respects the black community, but only underrepresented people because they will see so many people at the MET who will work with black designers,” she said. “I hope you see people who have never seen before. I hope that it will open up the conversation so that we don’t have to fight so hard to get approval from the luxury area that we should be here.”

Tunnel adjustments and basketball style

Although styling Griner was her first experience with the MET GALA, May’s work has long been a main support of the unofficial runway from Professional Basketball, which is known as a tunnel attack.

The NBA players started the trend, arrived in the arena that were dressed in the ninth and were photographed when he was photographed through the tunnel into the changing room. In recent years, WNBA stars have followed the example, although their style attracted a lot more attention.

Mays, who described Love, Jordan and 20-year-old NBA veteran Chris Paul, also has a strong impression on WNBA style. She dressed the New York Liberty’s Breanna Stewart, Tina Charles from Connecticut Sun and the retired Star Sue Bird.

“What she can do best is that she does it so that I feel my best in the clothes I wear,” said Stewart. “And that’s really the biggest, because when you see all these tunnel fits and people walk, they want them to represent who they are and feel their best.”

MAYS sees her work with WNBA players as a perfect way to demonstrate her passion for the advocate of diversity and inclusion.

“While the media start to block themselves in tunnel adjustments and the girls who wear the girls, I hope that we will see more of a wider lens that is poured into part of the sensitivity of the styles,” she said. “We have been very close to women who consider men to be attractive if I am only honest, and I hope that we see some of the women who present male, some of the women who attract more gender fluid.

Mays take part in the Met Gala again this year and “expects a visual attempt to show this variety in style when you see women in sports”.

“My ethos has always been how we can converge sports and style in a way that is authentic and in a way that feels diverse,” she said. “And what was really interesting for me can be seen with the chairpersons of the Met, two athletes as part of the conversation – I think that opens the door for other athletes to take part.”

Reporting by the Associated Press.

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