Fashion’s Super Bowl was held on Monday in New York, and of course, it was the female athletes that commanded all my attention. What was interesting, other than this year’s Costume Art outfits? The female sports stars represented just four disciplines: tennis, basketball, skiing and figure skating.

What She Wore: The 2026 MET Gala Co-Chair wore a custom Swarovski onyx mermaid gown with silver sparkles and a diamond necklace. The gown took inspiration from Robert Pruitt’s painting, “Venus Williams, Double Portrait” which commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery in 2022. Totally take the time to take a look at it HERE while the elaborate necklace is is a re-creation of the Wimbledon-plate-inspired necklace also seen in the painting.

What She Said: to Vogue - “It reflects not just my journey but the legacy of those who came before me - especially pioneers like Althea Gibson and Arthur Ashe, who paved the way. It felt like a personal way to connect with ‘Costume Art,’ using fashion to tell a story about legacy and progress and honouring those who made it possible.”

What She Wore: The WNBA Rookie of the Year made her MET Gala debut in a head-turning custom look by Coach, featuring actual brush strokes. The custom black graffiti ensemble represents street art.

What She Said: to E! Insider - “I love art, obviously I love fashion. For me too, basketball is an art. So I feel like it’s all of my worlds, collabing and colliding. And for this piece specifically, I really enjoyed how they put it together. All the little details, the beads, the colouring – everything came together perfectly.”

What She Wore: The Olympic skiing champ wore a literal bubble dress, by Dutch designer Iris Van Herpen. Adorned with glass bubbles, the showstopping piece featured a “secret button” hidden on the dress that triggered actual bubbles to surround her.

What She Said: to Met Museum - “Right now, I’m wearing something that literally freezes movement in time, like motion in time, because a bubble is ephemeral, right? It doesn’t last, but it also moves and it’s dynamic. And so to freeze it and distill it and create art out of it and create structure out of it is kind of magical. It’s so special for me to be showing this piece to the world.”

What She Wore: The figure skating sweetheart was another MET Gala debutant and was announced as Louis Vuitton’s newest house ambassador just hours before the event. Her dress was a burgundy gown made of satin and tulle, featuring a high-low skirt with layered ruffles. Liu paired her custom LV dress with a diamond and ruby choker by Pasquale Bruni.

What She Said: to Vogue - “I like how the skirt is so voluminous. The shape is so unique, and I like how it is shorter in front and then longer in the back. I also love the color, since I like wearing dark reds a lot. It’s so Chinese - it’s a lucky colour!”

What She Wore: The four-time Grand Slam champ made her MET Gala entrance in white Robert Wun dress with red feathered elements and a matching headpiece by London miliner Awon Golding. Underneath? A dazzling red gown with a sweeping train.

What She Said: to WTA - “The best part was designing the look with Robert Wun. I would say it was like a shedding of the skin. The first layer was the skin, and you could see little bits of “blood” coming out, and then I took it off and that was the human anatomy.”

What She Wore: The Atlanta Dream forward returned for her third consecutive MET Gala in a custom light pink off-the-shoulder Altuzarra trench coat gown with billowing sleeves and a high leg slit. She also partnered with NYX Cosmetics, for those following the beauty industry x women’s sports landscape.

What She Said: to Essence - “It’s giving chic, it’s giving baddie, it’s giving she grown.”

What She Wore: A Marc Jacobs silver lamé draped gown with gold leaf accents and gold Italian leather shoes. The design featured a wrap-around, one-shoulder element with a keyhole opening and formfitting bodice creating a cinched waist.

What She Said: to Vogue - “Marc Jacobs was really inspired by statues, so we’re going for this beautiful statue and I absolutely love it. It was so great working with Marc, too. It’s almost moulding. It’s pretty awesome.”

What She Wore: The four-time WNBA MVP made her MET Gala debut in a Prabal Gurung textured column gown. Also serving on the committee this year, her gold creation featured an off-the-shoulder neckline and dramatic cape-style sleeves flowing into trains. She completed the look with layered gold chokers, diamond accents, gold hair and gold paint on her hands.

What She Said: To E! - “I’m calling it the Midas look… everything I touch turns to gold. I love that it shows vulnerability but also strength. This is Prabal Gurung and he did a magnificent job of showing texture but also fluidity with the cape.”

What She Wore: Just three months after her devastating crash at the Olympics (and multiple surgeries) snow queen Lindsey Vonn wore a Thom Browne white-beaded mermaid gown (with over 500,000 glass beads creating a marble effect) inspired by classical statues. Her walking cane was also custom Thom Browne!

What She Said: to E! -“I just feel beautiful. They spent 4,000 hours to make this dress. There’s a lot of moments where I didn’t know where I would be or where I would get to, and getting to this place is really special. So I’m very thankful.”

Before diving right into the (makeup) bag, let’s briefly consider the evolution of sports marketing and how it grew to be a $20 billion industry:

Athlete and sport partnerships took a pivotal turn in the 1970’s.

Prior to this, athlete endorsements were, of course, completely dominated by men’s sports, and endorsements primarily consisted of apparel, tobacco and alcohol – the big bucks.

The turn came during the 1970 FIFA World Cup, when Puma infamously broke a pact with Adidas to sign football’s first global superstar, Pelé. Right before kick-off, they paid him $120,000 to tie his Puma shoes to ensure maximum camera coverage, in a fleeting moment that would earn any other athlete over $1 million today. The stunt was iconic and became the catalyst for change.

Later that decade, Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the 1978 FIFA World Cup became the deal that transformed global partnerships in sport forever. It was so colossal that is essentially established the concept of sponsorship exclusivity and demonstrated the combined branding power of two major international entities. Coca-Cola has served as an official sponsor of every World Cup ever since.

Over the last 50 years, sports marketing has developed into a multi-billion-dollar industry - about 20 billion, to be specific. Brands utilising sport for advertising purposes has expanded to every industry now; from cars to casinos, liquor stores to luxury goods, from fast food to fashion houses and even gambling to governments.

But, to this day - beauty in sport is a fascinating space that is evolving before our eyes.

It’s February 2025. Netflix released “Running Point” – a silly series that is about as accurate a portrayal of the behind-the-scenes of national basketball franchise as an American marketing associate in France. In this show, Kate Hudson’s character is appointed President of the LA Waves (à la Jeanie Buss) and delivers a ground-breaking monologue to Sephora in a sponsorship pitch:

“Our analysis shows that women make up one-third of all basketball viewers. On any given night, that’s 2 million women who all want to have glassy skin and a tight eyebrow game, and they’re gonna see your logo.”

While considering the female fan demographics for a male sports team seems obvious, this was meant to be a “mic drop” moment – advertising to women that watch sports – because women do watch sports – what a novel concept!

Reminder: this episode was released just last year.

Yes: the script is slightly dated (tight.. eyebrow.. game..) the defining scene still provides a notable timestamp.

And while we’ll never know production timelines or what came first - fortunately Sephora mirrored this concept IRL and when the series premiered, Sephora had already supported Unrivaled; the 3x3 off-season comp for its inaugural season.

The global retailer has since continued making moves in the basketball world – they signed a major partnership with the new WNBA franchise, the Golden State Valkyries and will be a founding partner for the next expansion team in Toronto when they make their debut in May. After that, they will be a league-level sponsor for Australia’s WNBL season later this year.

While they may be laying foundations (that’s a pun) in the women’s sports space, they certainly weren’t the first to do it. Flowers have to go to Glossier, the first makeup brand to make a significant investment in women’s sports, when they sponsored the WNBA in 2020. They became the first beauty partner of the league since it was formed in 1996, in a deal that was described by the WNBA as dynamic and innovative.

When Glossier became the WNBA’s official League Beauty Partner (albeit during COVID and the world was upside down, it doesn’t matter because) it became the first major league-wide beauty sponsorship in professional sports. Not only was it a monumental move in women’s sports, the commentary around it was important – as the Athletic acknowledged, was a standout partnership beyond just being the first. Glossier partnered with a league made up of predominantly Black women, a league that supports and celebrates its LGBTQ+ members, and a league that was unafraid to take on policies and politicians that don’t align with their values.

“This campaign feels very authentic,” says Dr. Amira Rose Davis, an Assistant Professor of History and African American studies at Penn State. “It’s how these top professional athletes engage with beauty products and their fierceness on and off the court in a way that doesn’t sacrifice one for the other.”

The digitally native, millennial pink beauty company founded by Emily Weiss continued to make history in 2024, when Glossier became the first ever Beauty Partner of USA Basketball, and became the first partner since 1995 to solely support the USA Women’s National Team.

Since then, cosmetic brands on every continent have been jumping on the rising women’s sports boat; looking to create meaningful partnerships that supports female athletes while also seeking headlines that display their contribution to the evolution.

In 2024, Charlotte Tilbury entered its first-ever global sports sponsorship with the F1 Academy and its all-female racing series. While it made waves due to the support of female drivers in a male-dominated sport, it also because the first beauty brand, and first female-founded brand to partner with Formula 1. Charlotte Tilbury’s sponsorship was for the all-female racing series, as well as a branded car. Driven by Lola Lovinfosse, the Rodin Motorsport car was known distinctly feminine; covered in “hot lips” with the slogan “Makeup your destiny,” and was unlike anything ever seen before on a racetrack.

In 2025, Clinique became the first-ever beauty partner of the Red Roses (England’s women’s rugby team) while e.l.f Cosmetics marked their first presence in men’s sports as a uniform sponsor for the Carabao Cup, as an extension to their back-of-shirt sponsor for the Hotspur Women that will also span the entirety of the Women’s Super League season until 2026.

Revlon made their beauty mark by selecting an athlete to be their first ever Canadian ambassador in hockey player Sarah Nurse, while Mary Fowler was selected to be L’Oreal’s first athlete ambassador for Australia and New Zealand. This partnership saw Fowler became the first footballer to ever walk in the Le Défilé runway (during Paris Fashion Week) in September 2025 (and looked incredible).

To really put a marker on where the evolution of beauty of sports is at, go back to the Pelé stunt in 1970 (read: 56 years ago) and something that happened in February – less than two months ago.

At the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, figure skater Alysa Liu made history when she became the first American women to land a quadruple jump and complete a triple Axel in internation competition. This is remarkable.

Team USA had not had a winner in the women’s singles event since 2002 - before Liu was even born - and the Californian snapped a 24-year drought for her country in this discipline. But what was the most viral moment from her historic victory?

Right before she took the podium to be presented her Gold Medal (by the first female President of the International Olympic Committee, no less) she frantically asked:

“Where is my lipstick?”

This set the internet on fire with sleuths trying to figure out the brand and shade.

Answer:

Rare Beauty’s Soft Pinch Tinted Lip Oil in “Delight”

Unlike Pelé x Puma, this wasn’t a stunt. This was a completely organic moment, that could’ve been completely missed, but the cameras caught it and so did the rest of the world.

There are so many synergies between this athlete and this brand.

Rare Beauty had the opportunity to capitalise – sign Liu as their Global Ambassador (just as Bella Hadid x Prada Beauty) create her own custom lip product (see M.A.C x Doja Cat) or create a timely collection in response (like Rhode x Sarah Pidgeon / Love Story).

More than one month on after Liu went viral, , the only response by the billion-dollar company is that Rare Beauty shared ESPN’s screenshots to their story. Selena Gomez reposted this, adding a crying face emoji.

How Rare Beauty didn’t snap up the 20-year-old skating sensation, at least establish some sponsorship support remains a mystery. While we don’t know what’s going on behind-the-scenes, we do know that Gomez should want to establish some kind of sponsorship support as a means of goodwill and good PR; particularly with the details of Liu’s background coming to light.

In other musician-turned-beauty-moguls, Rihanna had to orchestrate this moment herself, when she was the halftime act for the Superbowl in 2023. According to Launchmetrics, this three-second touch-up earned Fenty Beauty over US$11.3 million in media impact value in the following week, and Google searches for Fenty Beauty increased 883 per cent.

(FYI – Fenty Beauty sponsor WNBA’s NY Liberty, appearing on the team’s pre-game warn-up jackets and shooting shirts, Fenty also supported the Olympics and Paralympics).

It’s not as though Liu isn’t doing brand partnerships – she has a well-established relationship with Samsung and recently announced a campaign with Lucky Charms.

In similar fashion, Maybelline was late to the piece. American rugby player Ilona Maher rose to fame during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, particularly for her behind-the-scenes TikTok video, with the hashtag #beastbeautybrains and was featured by TIME.

If she was a rising star in Tokyo she became a solidified superstar in Paris, where she became as synonymous with female body positivity messages as she did with red lipstick, earning a Bronze medal at the Paris Olympics in the process. She made no secret that her brand of choice was Maybelline, and in 2022 even tagged them in a video asking them to sponsor her.

A few months after the 2024 Olympics, Maybelline became the first cosmetics partner of the New York City Marathon and brought Maher along – but she didn’t do an official campaign with them until 2025, almost a year later. (In fairness, it was worth the wait.)

It’s also worth noting that after the Marathon, Maybelline went on to become the inaugural title sponsor of the Women’s Lacrosse League in January 2025.

So what was the holdup? There were some brand activations

While L’Oreal Paris had some brand activations with Team USA in 2024 across multiple disciplines (including Maher, Suni Lee, Daniella Ramirez and Masai Russell) which could explain the holdup, in a world where currency is attention - speed is everything.

Think back to when a Stanley user went viral after her car caught on fire (Stanley famously gifted her a new car) or when Vogue did a feature on Justin Bieber wearing Crocs with socks (cue a collab within just months that sold-out) or when TikTokker Alix Earle used Benefit Cosmetics in her viral #GRWM videos, launching a limited-edition bag in response to the “Alix effect” and her influence. Why is it important to acknowledge this, and look at the advertising industry at large when it comes to women’s sports?

A report called “Her Love of the Game” (created by “The Team,” formally Wasserman) discovered that 72% of women globally now identify as sports fans – with over 50 per cent of them becoming fans just in the last five years. This is a huge acceleration that cannot be ignored.

Sports marketing might just be a $20 billion dollar industry, but this pales in comparison to the global beauty industry, which is set to reach $736 billion by 2028. There is a responsibility that major cosmetic conglomerates should have to support female athletes and women’s sports – an industry that continues to face financial constraints, pay inequity, less media coverage, governance gaps, less media coverage and smaller resource allocations.

(And for what it’s worth, women’s sport was estimated to be $2.3 billion globally in 2025.)

The growth of the women’s game is on an upwards trajectory, and we can yell Everybody’s Watches Women’s Sport and put it on a t-shirt; but what’s hot today might be lukewarm tomorrow. The beauty industry is primed and perfect to highlight women’s sports; and consumers of both need to vote with both their remotes and their wallets.

The momentum of women’s sports needs to continue – there’s a lot to make up for.

I went to the Women in Sports Congress last month – produced by the Australian Institute of Sport, it brings together the country’s best authorities to present the latest research on female health.

As I do at every public event, I was sitting in the very back row when Dr Laura Lallenec took the stage as the AFLW Medical Director. I was looking forward to her talk, and while I admit I didn’t not move any closer (as the photos below will confirm…sorry) I did sit up at full attention, complimentary conference pen at the ready.

Dr Lallenec deserves her flowers – she has been part of the AFLW for the last two years and brings experience as the Chief Medical Officer of Netball Australia, a Medical Advisor to Sport Integrity Australia as well as a Medical Consultant to the Commonwealth Games Federation.

This is important, because she brings experience from various sports that has been applied to the recent revolution of the AFLW and how it has set a new standard of what women’s elite sport healthcare should be.

Rewinding back to when Australia’s women’s football league launched in 2017, it featured just eight new teams and seven rounds of competition. Less than a decade later, the league has exploded to 18 teams (every men’s team now has a women’s side!) and 12 home-and-away rounds, followed by a month-long finals’ series.

While the AFLW’s trajectory and team expansion has got to be one of the fastest in women’s sports history – the beginning was messy.

“To ensure elite, high-performing athletes are looked after; and they perform at their best in a safe way, they require a strong healthcare system behind them,” explained Dr Lallenec.

“Historically, the AFL was designed around male physiology, male career trajectories and male life patterns. AFLW came into the exact same system, like many other men’s codes that introduced a women’s league.

THE PROBLEM

The AFL was built by men, for men. The career trajectories, the injury protocols, the physical considerations. When the women’s league began with the original eight teams, it was semi-pro and they had major problems from the jump. Despite having fewer teams and fewer players, ACL injuries were significantly higher than in the men’s competition, and concussion rates were also elevated. It’s pretty obvious why, and it’s not a dismilar situation to other women’s leagues arounds the globe. They had:

· Compressed fixture schedules

· Part-time players training after a full day of work/study

· Less recovery time between games,

· A lack of female-specific research to draw from

Dr Lallenec admitted the league applied the same standards to a completely different body with completely different needs, and unfortunately it required the women involved to call it out:

“They challenged these standards, and they demanded better. Women’s sport shouldn’t just adjust - it should design and command bespoke designs around it,” she said.

“This has resulted in system transformation in the AFL, which is still ongoing, and we still have our challenges in the space.”

THE SOLUTION

That system transformation has been ongoing and the AFLW have a growing body of research, particularly around ACL and concussion. This looks like injury surveillance systems, soft tissue registries, weekly concussion audits. Dr Lallenec said that ACL rates have come down substantially over the years, and concussion rates are now in line with the men’s competition.

The 2024 Collective Bargaining Agreement was the most significant in the league’s history, as it included 12-month contracts and gave the players financial and housing security. Progressively, over the years, the AFLW have also introduced:

· 12 months of parental leave

· Pregnancy support policies

· Evidence-based concussion protocols

· Heat illness mitigation strategies

· Equal minimum standards for healthcare practitioners

“It wasn’t just about physical health – as it shouldn’t be. We looked at ways to expand beyond that,” explained Dr Lallenec.

“A comprehensive mental health framework, called the ‘Player Mental Health Roadmap’ was introduced last year and it was after extensive industry consultation, looking at community healthcare services as well as international codes.”

THE LEARNING

Of course it’s not limited to the AFLW, all women’s sports should all have women-specific healthcare policies, and Dr Lallenec said it should meet the following criteria:

- Protect player health, wellbeing and safety (with fit-for-purpose systems)

- Create consistency and equity across the men & women’s competitions (with clear expectations around injury management)

- Define minimum standards for healthcare provision and governance (including medical processes and decision-making structures)

- Address female-specific healthcare needs (such as pregnancy, fertility and specific-injury risk profiles for women)

- Enhance player available, longevity and long-term health (physically and mentally well players are available players)

- Support player performance (and ultimately team performance)

THE FUTURE

The future is where it gets exciting, and perhaps most importantly: they AFLW are not pretending the job is done. The roundtable discussions are still happening, and they continue to grow their database of research, including a ‘Brain Health Initiative’ that tracks player brain health from talent level through to retirement and beyond.

THE REALITY

Women’s sport shouldn’t have to adjust to systems designed for men. Women’s sport should demand systems designed for women.

The early days of AFLW were ugly – but they had to start somewhere.

The women didn’t just accept it. They demanded better. And slowly, game by game, policy by policy, they’re building something that actually works.

The women playing AFLW today have 12-month contracts, parental leave, equal prize money, and healthcare standards that factor in female physiology. This isn’t equality – it’s equity, and it sets a benchmark for elite women’s sports everywhere.

So… this is new. Please be kind as I stumble through an awkward introduction. I can’t promise you it will be entertaining (or brief) but I can assure you that everything published after this will be at the very least, somewhat informative; but unfortunately no less brief.

My name is Jasmine, hi - and if you clicked on this headline, I would assume you have at least a mild curiosity in women’s sports, specifically in Australia and New Zealand.

I hope this is the case (because the sports in the southern hemisphere is actually really good) but if that mild curiosity is in more adjacent topics like marketing, brand and culture, then I hope you subscribe even more so - welcome to the Women’s Sports Society.

What’s in store? Deep dives, think-pieces, and reporting on everything and everyone in the women’s game; without the play-by-play. Culture, competition and capital. And other cool things happening in the women’s sports space.

While there will be a strong down under focus, it will not be geographically limited to the southern hemisphere. The first feature (which will be online after this goes live) will be on Australia’s women’s football league and the major strides it’s making in the medical space (pretty Aussie) but the second will be an analysis on the gigantic cosmetics industry and women’s sports (pretty global.)

Everything published here will always be well-researched and hopefully thought-provoking enough to stimulate discussion. And if for some reason, if there' is ever a pause on publishing here; please send me strongly-worded emails with light threats, as there needs to be more of it.

More editorial, more content, more discussion, more women in sport and more women celebrating other women in sport.

And even if I manage to maintain this labor of love, and you want to collaborate / conversate / collaborate in some capacity, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, always open to feedback, notes and jokes. But subscribe first, of course. And support women’s sports, down under and elsewhere ;)

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