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What: Vogue and Elle magazines, January editions
Price: $3.50
They have style that isn’t taken from fashion runways and grace that can’t be bought at a cosmetics counter, but this month Marion Jones and Venus and Serena Williams find themselves on the covers of top fashion magazines in the United States.
Elle profiles the Williamses. Vogue features Jones.
Get used to it, athletes and the fashion world are coming together like never before.
“Fashion and sport are about to collide--just about the way that celebrity and fashion crashed into one another in the early 1990s,” Barneys New York creative director Simon Doonan told Elle. “Serena and Venus are going to be at the throbbing epicenter of that particular wake. These two divas are very haughty and extremely groovy.”
The magazine focuses on the Williamses talking about race, their future and their place in the tennis world.
Would Serena Williams prefer people simply say she is an extraordinary tennis player rather than treating her performance as a statement that “black people can be good at tennis too?”
“I’ve never felt that way because I am black and kids look up to me, and I’m proud of that.”
Venus Williams discusses why she and her sister are often seen as outsiders in the tennis world:
“Serena and I are exactly the opposite of anything that ever happened before in the game. The old tennis world was pretty reserved. But Serena and I are bold, we stand out. We have color. We’re strong. We’re pretty. We have personalities. We think things out. We’re smart.”
And Venus talks about the sisters’ plans for the future, which include having a fashion line: “I think in some ways we’re always going to be together. Maybe we’ll have a design studio and little stores in Paris and New York. That’s a nice dream--a nice dream for us.”
In the meantime, more Wimbledon and U.S. Open titles would be nice.
Jones may not dress as groovy as the Williams sisters, but her sense of style is never in question.
“She’s not a glamour girl in the mode of the late, great [Florence Griffith Joyner],” writes Julia Reed for Vogue. “Jones’ appeal lies in her awesome self-possession. Her flash--in the form of shimmering chrome-paneled Nikes--as well as her fierceness is reserved for track.”
For those who don’t regularly read Vogue, the Jones profile makes it worth the buy, if only for the images of the athlete captured by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
“Before my career is over,” says Jones, who discusses how she keeps grounded, “I will attempt to run faster than any woman has ever run and jump farther than any woman has ever jumped.”
Jones adds that she wants nothing less than to be included in the same sentence as Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan.
Lofty goals.
But who would expect anything less from Jones?
