There's Something Chic Happening In Women's Sports

Thanks to Aligne for partnering with me on this piece.

It’s been a big few years for women’s sports. In 2024, WNBA viewership jumped 170% The National Women’s Soccer League saw viewership jump 21% in 2025. Fashion, and it’s $850 billion womenswear industry is taking note.

Back in 2024, I wrote a piece for Refinery 29 about fashion’s shift into the sports arena. Athletes have hired their own stylists, Coco Gauff doesn’t just have a New Balance sponsorship, she’s also dressed by Miu Miu. Athletes sit beside A-list actors at fashion shows.

But, for brands to show up and stand out in the athlete space, it’s not enough to tap the next It athlete. As Daniel-Yaw Miller reports in his newsletter Sportsverse, Athlete Collectives are on the rise. But, not every attempt rings authentic.

I’ve loved to see how Daniella Kallmeyer has created a community among the women of the WNBA and NWSL, courting sportswear labels like Nike to come on in partnership in the process. Another is Aligne, the British ready-to-wear brand that has gone all in on the business of female athletes. It’s a model that’s working — in 2025, the brand underwent 56% YOY revenue growth. I had the chance to chat with Ginny Seymour, CEO and Chief Creative Officer, about why she bet on women’s sports, and what a reciprocal relationship between brand, athlete, and fans looks like.

Where did your interest in working with athletes come from?

After Covid, I was watching the Lionesses play in the Euro cup, and at the time I was trying to articulate what Aligne stood for. Every brand had the same story, the same values. I was trying to envision our first brand campaign as something different.

I’m not actually athletic. I give Class Pass benefits to my team, and I don’t use them. It has nothing to do with sport in this traditional sense. We’re not a sportswear brand, but the best way to describe Aligne and what confidence is to the brand, is a female athlete off the pitch. They’re breaking the biggest glass ceiling that exists, changing the perception of what sport is, they’ve become role models not just girls but to boys.

I started my career as a buyer for Saks, and I grew up in the era when it was smoking cigarettes and drinking diet coke for lunch. You had to be frail. You had to be skinny. But, I don’t want to be talked about as fragile or weak. I want to be described as confident, strong, determined. I wasn’t seeing a lot of fashion brands at the time, you know, going into sport. Watching the Euro Cup, Lucy Bronze had done so much on the pitch, no one was talking about that as what femininity is. Just because you’re an athlete doesn’t mean you want to wear Nike off the pitch.

It’s tradition for an athlete to have a sportswear contract, and maybe a luxury watch or bag. How do you see brands like Aligne shifting the perception of brands that athletes are associated with?

When we first did it, there was shock because we weren’t a sportswear brand. The confusion around why an apparel brand that does blazers and jackets would try to enter the space was talked about a lot in the UK. But there’s a saying, “look good, feel good, play good.” Players want all of those things off the pitch as well. Just because you’re an athlete doesn’t mean you want to wear Nike off the pitch.

What were the athlete reactions when you started coming to them?

When we approached Lucy, she’d always wanted to get into the space, but she didn’t think a fashion brand would want to work with her. As much as I had imposter syndrome reaching out to her, she never thought a fashion brand would come to her. From that, it’s been other athletes coming to us saying, “would you work with me as well?” We work with our ambassadors on ShopMy, really exposing them to the whole commercial side of affiliate links. They want to be the best in a professional sport, they’re not content creators, yet here they are with a fan base that’s so interested in everything they do.

Gotham Football Club was another example of a team that wanted to get into this fashion space, didn’t know how to, and reached out to us, a small British brand. We obviously thought it was a great opportunity, as we’re growing in the U.S., to have that same relationship across both countries.

Can you talk more about the Gotham FC partnership and what it entails?

We do tunnel walks with them. It’s really important that they get to show their personal styles. They’re the ones picking the looks and styling them. Last year in February was the SheBelieves Cup, with one team from the U.S., one team from Europe, one team from Asia, and one team from South America. We dressed the whole team in suits, but we made three different suit options so that each player could pick whether they wanted.

And what about beyond professional football teams?

It’s not about football, football is just so big in the UK. It’s really about any female athlete who is breaking boundaries in their sport. We’ve worked with Katie Boulter for tennis, but we love the rugby project we worked on. It started because the World Cup was in England last summer. But we also partnered with a local grassroots rugby team to make sure the girls had shorts that fit them, because most kids’ kits are unisex.

So many women in sports love fashion and always have. The assumption that they lack style has perhaps been the reason many clothing brands haven’t yet reached out to female athletes. — Tatyana Heard, World Champion Rugby Player

It’s about asking how do you keep more girls in sports, and how do you start influencing that next generation? So really making sure that as much as we’re doing things with some of these amazing superstars, we’re also putting some funding into grassroots organizations.

Beyond the athletes themselves, how do you see fans fitting into the narrative?

Fans are wearing the Lucy Bronze collection to Chelsea matches. They’re engaged with understanding what our values are, supporting us as a small female-led brand. It’s transcended into a community that might not otherwise have known about who Aligne was, and brought us a new customer base that’s really engaged.

Even in the last few years, interest in women’s sports has really evolved.

What they’re doing so well is that they’re not just trying to replicate the men’s mode. Gotham FC had 40,000 people at the Queen’s Classic. Men and women, boys and girls. They’re not trying to create something that’s just women for women. They’re trying to create something that’s positive, that’s inclusive, and that is celebrating how sport can look as a community-driven thing. It’s a very positive experience.

In the U.S. I think the WNBA is the leader, the same way in the U.K. it’s football. But you’re seeing the WNBA stars show up at the WSL games and trying to bring the fan base from one to the other. It’s very collaborative. And it’s a new generation, my boys know as many Lionesses as they know England football players. They don’t see differences.

Who do you see doing good things in the women’s sporting space?

Anthropologie is doing a great job. They partner with Angel City for their tunnel walks. Burberry does a great job in the UK. Obviously, LVMH is doing a great job, but it still feels more male-centric.

We were lucky, we’re a tiny brand, but we entered at the right time. Growth has been so tremendous over the past three years. I think it’s becoming harder for small brands to participate, so it’s looking to the bigger brands to enter the conversation because commercially, it’s becoming much more restrictive for small brands to enter.